


Can’t Fight These Bad Intentions

by snoozingkitten, YogurtTime



Category: Johnny's Entertainment, KAT-TUN (Band), NewS (Band)
Genre: AU, Alcohol, Dubious Morality, M/M, Multi, Supernatural Elements, Superpowers, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-21 00:58:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11933010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snoozingkitten/pseuds/snoozingkitten, https://archiveofourown.org/users/YogurtTime/pseuds/YogurtTime
Summary: "Choice was really interesting that way. Junno had sped at him like a bullet and for all his threats there had always been a choice. Even if it had been between a rock and a hard place."





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> So to add some context, the bare premise of this is based on the film Push where the world is full of people with post-war weapon super human powers. Their lives and progress are both governed and dictated by different branches of an organisation called Division.

There are precious few things that separate people from animals. Nakamaru didn’t care for most of them; there was always something to be said about creature comforts after all.

The only one that interested Nakamaru was choice.

If you had the mind, you could plot a person’s life like a road map; trace their paths. With enough time you could plot the world, people meeting and leaving, catastrophically crashing and burning, speeding away in a straight line or fish-tailing with indecision. Of course there were hidden intersections and stop lights but there was _always_ a choice; road signs meant little to some people.

Junno was often like that. He was hard to predict in that he rarely had a goal in mind. Nakamaru could see the future; he didn’t understand the concept of instant gratification the way that other people did. He didn’t think anyone else quite got it the way that Junno did.

Outside the sun was getting ready to rise; the sky was just beginning to light all the stars slipping away to hide for a little. Something in his dreams had shocked him awake, heart beating like a run-away train and slipping away just as fast. His sleeping was all messed up by the last week-long bender they had been on so he got out of bed, watching the city rise from the safety of his window.

Hell, sometimes Junno’s instant gratification was more than worth it even if it left his head all fuzzy and all the lines of the future spinning like a psychedelic pin-wheel.

Tokyo was cupped in the palms of the pre-dawn sky; buildings towering like reaching hands. Nakamaru rubbed his eyes and wondered if he had dreamed of things to come or things he had already done. Nightmares with him could be either. Junno had been shaking up the local gangsters for his own amusement and Maru was usually there to keep him dancing to his own tune just one step ahead of everyone else. It left him a little twitchy, you never know when something was going to come down on them.

He could feel the blood pounding in his head, a week’s worth of hang over catching up with him in one swoop. The glass was cold against his face-- soothing.

Junno was sitting on the couch watching the shopping network, stark bruises under his eyes like he’d been punched twice. “We need these knives.” Junno said breathless with awe.

“We don’t cook.” Maru said, shuffling across the hard wood floor towards the bathroom. He was covered in the slick almost acidic sweat of sleeping out a hangover. If he was lucky one of them had remembered to have the cleaner come in some time in the past week. If he wasn’t, then he would be sharing his shower with some sort of new mutant fungus, so be it.

Junno tore his eyes away from the man trying to sell the knives, the television showing it cutting perfectly through a tomato without squishing, none of the seedy-slick insides spurting out.

“But you can always use a knife.” Junno said mock-sagely. His eyes were blown wide. It was almost the same look he got when he was using his powers. Maru had to trust he knew when Junno was using his powers and he was half asleep, but he still didn’t want to buy the knife, so Junno was probably just high still.

“I’m going to shower.” Maru announced needlessly. Junno had gone back to staring at the television without blinking.

The lady next door thought that they were too old to be living together. She was probably right anyways. Maru made a point to understand that Junno was bad for him; a bad influence at least and a potentially dangerous manipulative criminal at most. It had been at least two years since he was actively a ‘prisoner’ here.

Choice was really interesting that way. Junno had sped at him like a bullet and for all his threats there had always been a choice. Even if it had been between a rock and a hard place.

\--

 

**Past**

Maru had escaped _Division_ two weeks ago. Two weeks of what had to be the most elaborate chess matches against other Watchers, Sniffs and all the assorted playing peices that Division had at their beck and call. Being able to see the future became a lot less of an advantage when you weren’t the only one.

If it wasn’t the Watchers it was the Sniffers, human blood hounds with a price on his head. Maru knew their game intimately, how many people had he hunted down anyways? He knew the way they worked. It kept him just that one half-step ahead.

He’d been trapped in New York of all places. On the plus side it wasn’t too hard to get a gun here even if his English was a bit shaky. Their game of chess had spilled across the boroughs, Maru blending into the subway (leading a sniffer into the subway was stuffing a cat’s nose with catnip) and criss-crossing the city while looking for a way out.

Maru never did find out just how Junno found him. Probably had to do with the fact that Maru had to trust non-Division sources and Junno had his fingers in a lot of illicit pie at any given moment. At the time it hadn’t seemed the most important thing to ask.

 _”You know, a good seer is worth his weight in gold on the open market.”_ They met in a Dunkin’ Donuts while Maru was sipping terrible coffee and staring at the humidity damage in the corners. The table top was scarred under his fingers years of abuse and bored teenagers.

He’d stiffened. He’d seen a future where he was on a plane back to Japan and assumed that meant he would find a way home. He hadn’t assumed it meant he was going to be _sold_. Maru scowled at the man; he had a pink glazed doughnut and tore it in half with long pale fingers.

 _“I wasn’t aware.”_ Maru replied, begging the future to show him something but it was blank.

 _“Ones pretty as you are hard to come by.”_ He slid half the doughnut across the table to him.

 _“No thank you.”_ Maru said, words clipped and not pleased at all. The man behind the counter wasn’t any help, to him they were just two more Japanese tourists having breakfast.

 _”You’re really hungry, aren’t you?”_ His pupils grew wide and Maru’s stomach cramped letting out a pitiful growling sound. Years of self restraint clamped down, the muscles in his back tensing to lift his hand towards the half of doughnut. It looked so delicious.

 _“Don’t.”_ Maru hissed between his teeth. Suddenly he was a lot less sure of himself. He had never had to handle a Pusher without back up before. Junno smiled at him, looking pleased with himself, or Maru.

_”Just a bite?”_

It was defeat, he ate a quarter of it in one bite swallowing thickly. Objectively he knew it was too sweet, but at that moment he was starving and it was the best thing ever. He ate the second bit in a bite too. Out of petty revenge he reached across the table and took the other half as well and Junno blinked at him, his snake’s smile melting away into something less robotic.

 _”Or I could keep you.”_ Maru glared at him. The future still showed him on a plane waking up over the Pacific ocean to breakfast served by a stewardess with a bland smile and hair in a severe bun.

 _”Try me.”_ Nakamaru snarled around his doughnut instead of shooting him. After all Junno was tall and had blond hair at the time.

Maru had a good track record with that.

 

\--

 

The water was too hot. Incidentally the maid had come in and there wasn’t even a trace of fungus in the bathroom, it made his skin flush pink. The wall was cool against his shoulder where he leaned against it yawning so wide his jaw cracked.

His head throbbed like a bruise. He didn’t even bother to try and call on the futures. He was closed for business until everything in his brain sorted itself out right-side up. Still, something was off. The quality of the air was different. Some innate sense was pinging. He knew this feeling like a itch at the bottom of his stomach. Something was coming; something big was coming.

Maru swallowed past the dryness of his throat, opening his mouth for a quick gulp of soapy water. Through the haze of his hangover he caught fuzzy flashes of colour. It hurt the same way stretching a sore muscle did, the illusion of movement that made his stomach curl. Maru let all his weight lean against the wall, too-hot water making the air thick. Something was there and he was failing to grasp it.

It was useless to tell Junno at this point. He had curled up into a small ball and had fallen asleep at some point when Maru was using all the hot water. His eyelids even looked bruised and he seemed fairly harmless while asleep. Taking a blanket thrown over the couch he covered what part of Junno he could see, dripping water from the ends of his hair across the thin cotton of Junno’s shirt. He didn’t stir in the slightest. “Idiot.” Maru sighed before moving towards the kitchen in the vain hope that there was food somewhere hiding in the back of the shelves.

He couldn’t do anything at the moment. The far future had never been his strong suit. He was much better at the immediate which was why he had been a field agent. He could bide his time and hope that when it came down to it he would turn the right way.

All the cupboards were empty. Maru spent a tsk-ing moment shaking a series of empty cereal boxes, refrigerator full of condiments and wrapped up, half-hearted leftovers. Maru perched on a stool at the miniature island with some leftover cold spaghetti, shoving aside the more congealed parts with the back of his fork.

The haze of colour, barely licking at real images, still blurred his vision like a low-tide wave. It wasn’t just hunger making it difficult for him to hold off the weight of a future on-coming but nothing should be as clear when he was sober or worse, hungover. Still, it was starting to raze in saturated deep water tones flooding in and out. Familiar faces and all too familiar settings went practically solid for a frozen second before they melted.

Maru knew being a Watcher didn’t extend to vivid sights of the past. He didn’t so much see the future as he saw _intentions_ and somehow some one’s intention had shifted into his immediate sphere of influence, which would make what he had just seen mean a large number of things. None of them good. He set down his fork and dropped his forehead into his hand, massaging just under his fringe where the vision had begun seeping in like pressure.

As the image came again with an odd sort of little pain, he uttered a faint curse, his groaning sigh muted by the blare of the television.

 

\--

 

This part of town smelled like rain, hot and cement-heavy but Kabukichou had that quality to it. Lights everywhere, bleary greens and pinks, and faded signs completely aswim with salty smoke from the fry-up stalls.

“Mmm. Sexy,” Junno remarked. His wide black eyes shone when Maru passed him a loaded 9x19 mm pistol. He drew out the word like he did with half his vocabulary; a taunting, wet stretch of bubblegum. “Who’s about to be dressed in lead tonight?”

“ _No_ one,” Maru said pointedly, prodding Junno’s arm for him to put it away quickly. “It’s just for show.”

They passed several store fronts and Maru started watching for an open alley when Junno, in a weird pretense of slinging his arm around Maru, leaned in close. “We’re being followed, aren’t we?”

Maru gave him a faint nod, watching faces pass for any eyes straying on them for too long. Junno dropped his arm and did a bit of a heel-turn, walking backward as he slipped his hands in his pockets. “Why haven’t you pointed them out yet? You know, all it takes is one look,” he prompted, voice low with his smile broad and shark-like.

“Because I’d like to know who they’re with,” Maru murmured.

Junno sidestepped a puddle with a deliberate show of grace and Maru shut his eyes, still walking but training his inner eye on a more identifiable point. He saw only shadows, a gun barrel in a jacket pocket, and eyes trained on the both of them, steady and studying.

“At least before they realise I know they’re there,” he added.

When Maru opened his eyes Junno was just coming off an irreprehensible shrug, eyes rolling. “This is just an errand. Money changing hands-- well-- their hands to mine.”

Maru shook his head, biting his lip pensively. “If I can see them then it means they’re going to do something besides follow...but why can’t I see the result?”

“Well, if you don’t want my help...” Junno laughed.

Maru glared, still trying to keep in step with him. “You’re not even trying to be covert these days, are you? Even if they hand you that money, they _will_ connect the dots once you walk out of there. What if whoever’s following us is with you-know-what?”

“Is that a premonition?” Junno said smilingly.

“I can’t see a thing when you’re going blind like this,” Maru snapped, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Something on your mind, honey?”

“Whatever, let’s just do this.”

Junno swivelled again, watching neon lights ahead. ”Do you ever think of being completely naked; having a suitcase of loose cash emptied over you?”

“God. What? No, I really don’t.”

“Fresh, new bills. _I_ do.”

“I bet.”

This resulted in a low bubble of laughter, caustic enough to go with the side-long leer Junno shot him then. Maru sighed at the image that immediately splashed right over his vision; too technicolour and visceral to be just his own imagination. It stopped him in his tracks. It appeared he would be the one naked in Junno’s version...

“Right.” he went on stiffly. “Aside from what you’ve already got in mind, what do you need all that money for suddenly?”

Junno’s subsequent pause made Maru watch him closely. “Not sure,” he finally replied, looking over at him, gaze dark.

Maru didn’t need another dose of that smile in order to believe him. He tried to see Junno’s intentions; sometimes he tried until he could feel his very neurons go numb.

Junno genuinely had nothing in mind. Maru could never be sure where that put Junno along the spectrum of intelligence. Yet with Junno glancing back at him between steps, eyes sharp and mean mouth turned up smugly, there was no telling.

 

\--

 

The back entrance. Maru didn’t like surprises and their follower was keeping a safe enough distance. He couldn’t see any sign of intention aside from simply following. Either this person knew he was a Watcher or they’d done something to pique some persistent curiosity here.

He knew it couldn’t be Division. He had specific tells for that and hadn’t seen any.

“Don’t get distracted now. If they have someone outside my range, I need you to spot that for me,” Junno whispered, looping his finger through the shoddy metal lock over the door handles.

“Yes, yes, go on then.” Maru shooed him, looking quickly around behind him. He had to swallow the other images; it was all beginning to look scrambled. Past and present and Junno’s intentions diving from one place to another, the most _banal_ things.

Junno stepped back and axe-kicked the lock; long leg slammed down with the heel of his boot striking true. “Anything?” he asked, straightening up..

Maru shot him a look. “You mean do I see you covered in bullet wounds? No.”

 

\--

 

It was a lounge and from the voices distant, there were a number of them. Who knew how Junno got his information and he never made it known whether he was just doing things to stir shit up or whether he had some elaborate plan but if it weren’t for their innate ‘insurance,’ they’d be dead before Maru could work him out.

“Four,” Junno muttered at him. “There’s got to be only four of them.”

Maru grimaced. He immediately saw them going in there; someone on his right pointing a gun at his head and a bullet flying when Junno grabbed for his weapon. “You have to be quick; don’t reach for your gun. It’s a close-knit meeting and they _will_ shoot you first,” he hissed as fast as he could as they entered the room.

“Come on, these guys know me,” Junno replied loudly as four dour men in suits turned to look at them.

These men were not supposed to be Junno’s acquaintances. Junno fiddled around with family yakuza but never the old families and as Maru looked around, he was beginning to recognise members from the prestigious Bakuto Oyama Group. Debt-collectors and bank owners.

The elderly hard-faced boss, seated in a wide Zaisu chair in front of a low table, regarded them incredulously. Maru didn’t breathe as he felt the press of something cold and metallic to the back of his head just as he envisioned..

“Sorry I’m late.” Junno said smoothly, fixing his gaze on the man.

“Who the hell are you?” Boss Oyama said at last.

“You invited us?” Junno replied, stepping forward unmindful of the one man rising defensively, hand to his weapon.

“I...did,” Boss Oyama said slowly, brow furrrowed.

“Mm, I’m a little late,” Junno went on, gaze never straying from Oyama. “Couldn’t decide what to wear.”

If they survived this, Maru was going to hurt him later.

Oyama gestured to the man holding the gun to Maru’s head who stood down and moved to stand beside Oyama.

“What’s the meaning of this, Oyama-ojiki?” said the man seated across from him. An Investment Bank-owner. This was not just a debt-collection; it was a protection racket payment. “You swore that no others but your closest knew about this meeting...”

“Quickly...” Maru prodded under his breath. He knew Junno liked to play around with these big name bosses and it wasn’t funny. Not now that a river of futures were clouding his brain. Junno’s corpse in a petrol-soaked car, going up in flames. Something else. Something.

“...calling in someone from Division.”

Maru froze and looked quickly at Junno whose jaw had gone tight as he made a valiant effort not to look over at the bank owner. Junno’s eyes were almost full black; the bank owner obviously recognised the signs.

Oyama was blank; Junno was completely in his head but as his indecision dragged on, there was only silence and stares.

“Protection. I am here for his protection,” Junno said quickly, tone sharp. He wasn’t playing anymore. “You know about us?”

The bank owner looked Junno up and down scathingly. “How can you not know? They told us they’d inform any of theirs of the boundaries--”

“Sir?”

The thug of Oyama Group were looking between blank-faced Oyama and Junno. Maru felt a sudden heat. It struck him like a swift blow; the room blew forward into tunnel vision as the weak swirls of visions playing at the edges of his mind crashed in on him and he stumbled back from it. He saw the offices, the labs, shaking familiar fingers reaching for a tray of test tubes. Footfalls behind him, crawling shadows and atmospheric notions of everything he’d known at Division. A face to a name.

_Koyama._

“We need to go,” Maru murmured shakily, starting to back away. “Now.”

“Wait!” Junno barked, tone low as a growl.

Maru looked at him. His fists were clenched, wide depthless eyes a full glassy black, every muscle on his body taut.

“Saito, call our contact!” the bank owner shouted, eyes widening at the sight of Junno.

The investment bank owner’s underling moved for his mobile and withdrew out the door and Maru quickly reached for the gun in the back of Junno’s jeans, but it was as his fingers closed on the pistol grip that he saw the bank owner’s formerly hard stare go slowly dizzy; his mouth sagged as Junno expelled a soft meditative breath..

“Let’s all just...calm down,” Junno said with some effort.

Oyama, the bank owner, and Oyama’s thug all visibly relaxed, gazing at him completely rapt.

Maru straightened, looking at them. For all the time Maru had known him, Junno had only ever managed or bothered with one person at a time, and he was a master at selecting the most influential being in the room to Push. Yet as he stood there, whole body tense with effort, Junno was holding _three_ people under his sphere of influence.

“I can’t,” Junno hissed, backing up. “I can’t make them do anything; I can only hold them. Grab the case.”

“What, you’re still--?”

The veins on Junno’s arms were standing out starkly, eyes like round, acidic black ice; his smile was peculiar. “It’s your call then.”

Maru _hated_ when he did that. The delibitating shock of little freedoms always clouded over when he was given huge split-second choices; it was worse than surprises. He didn’t like to call it panic, but it brought out the worst in him.

The case was heavy and Maru tucked it under his arm, shooting Junno a vicious look. “I don’t have the right descriptive words for how much I’m going to resent you for this!” he snapped.

Junno took a deeper breath, adopting a most aggravating grin with his eyes still fixed on Oyama. “See any _immediate_ problems?”

Maru looked toward the door where the underling had gone to make the call. If that man was calling a contact from Division, they definitely had a problem. Division had every given type at their disposal. Watchers like him, Pushers like Junno, the Bleeders, the Sniffers who had been after him in the first months, but what Maru was most worried about in the present were the Porters, the ones who could appear at any given place when given a clear picture.

“Let’s not risk it,” he replied and Junno dropped his hold on Oyama and they both bolted for the door, leaving the startled three staring at the empty room.

They couldn’t head straight home, that was definite. As they walked up three blocks briskly and cut into an alley, Maru kept his vision fixed; tried to see with more clarity, but he already knew he’d need to get really hammered for this one.

Maru watched Junno latch onto a fire escape after what looked like a physically impossible jump off a wall-kick.

“Toss the case up; I’ll catch it,” Junno called, leaning over the railing as the ladder screeched on its bolts, descending in front of Maru.

“The roof, huh?” Maru mumbled. He’d never liked heights.

 

\--

 

“There’s got to be about about a million in this. It’s so neat and orderly; I love new bills,” Junno was saying, kneeling over the open case.

Maru hopped up on an aluminium plated thing cross-legged, elbow on his knee and chin on his fist. He watched a bit listlessly as Junno counted the bills, uttering faint happy things like a bit of a loon. Tonight was too close of a call and the further they went, the higher the risk. He knew he’d be running away forever, but he had had some semblance of hope that he’d be able to relax a little.

“You don’t look as relieved to be safe as I thought you’d be,” Junno said suddenly.

Maru blinked down at him. “We’re _not_ safe. They’re closer than they ever were.”

Junno grimaced in response, leaning back on his haunches with his stare reflecting neon glares. “Oh come on now, that’s ridiculous. Cheer up, you; we got away!” He brandished a wad of bills in Maru’s general direction, trying at being winsome. “Here, have some money.”

Maru looked away from him pointedly, frowning at the streetlights below. “I’ve been seeing them since this morning, Division that is. This was the event that brought it to full clarity. We’ll have to move--”

“Not at all,” Junno cut in matter-of-factly, getting to his feet. “We touched absolutely nothing in that room and that bank owner thinks Oyama called us. No one in there knew we were on our own and when they call in their contact, they’ll take Oyama in for questioning and by the time they get answers, the trail will be cold.”

Maru nodded, but rubbed the sides of his head. “Then why can I still see them?” he demanded fruitlessly, somewhere off in the air. “I see the labs, the building... someone--” Attractive, entreating gaze that could sink a hollow ship and smile like broken test tubes. “--People I used to know...”

 _Koyama_ again.

The name shimmered over the forefront of his mind, filled his mouth with a half-taste like salt right under his tongue. Maru watched the picture of his gaze flash through his mind. How Koyama had not been _everything_ Division represented, but that Division was knotted around something cemented inside Koyama. Deeply. Let no man put asunder sort of tether and it had tried to rope Maru right in.

Easier not to explain it to Junno.

When Maru looked up, Junno was standing, regarding him with an imitation at curiosity, but it was almost deliberate, brows high, smile mystified.

Being distracted, Maru didn’t quite see it in time, but Junno’s fingers closed on his knees; whole self got right in his space like Junno could sometimes. He entered physically in Maru’s spaces where the future could flip-switch in an instant, all pretty lips and low laughter. He kissed like that. Man without a plan who bit down when Maru braced his hands over shoulders in a defensive gesture.

“Let’s go squander some wealth,” Junno said, breathy chuckle right over Maru’s lips.

Maru shoved him off out of reflex, snarling something wordless as he tried to get his personal space back and right his balance all at once. Junno’s laugh was sharp loud in the space between them breath too-warm in the cool night.

Didn’t mean Maru wasn’t going to follow him anyways, even when he was at his most infuriating all high off his own power and a fresh score like a junkie with a hit.

Junno didn’t have habits as much as he liked to haunt places like a particularly tall and lean ghost. There were a few places where Junno would choose to spend their ill-gotten gains unless something new caught his attention. Maru wouldn’t leave the case because they had both handled it and all it would take was a sniffer to link them to the theft instead holding it tight to his side as the bouncer eyed it suspiciously. Junno put a hand on his shoulder and leaned over him addressing the bouncer his voice all dreamy soft ‘we’ve got some business with the Master, don’t mind the baggage yeah?’

Carmine wasn’t really a lady. Not in the a ‘lady is always proper’ kind of unladylike, but in the secretly having a dick in her tiny dress sort. Well Maru assumed, he’d never seen it. She did have the filthiest intentions towards Junno; splayed behind his eyelids like everything that was good and bad about cheap porn.

“Shot of vodka, the most expensive one.” Maru said, and the bartender looked at the case but ignored it in favour of the bills Maru left flash between his fingers. “Make that two of them.”

Carmine was pressed up against Junno whispering something to him that had Junno nodding along looking utterly fascinated. The immediate future showed Junno giving her money and her giving him something small in return a shiny cigarette holder. He felt no need to turn around and watch it actually happen.

Two shots was a good start. He paid the man and slammed one back letting it burn all the way down. He followed that quickly with the second one. He hadn’t eaten in awhile; it wouldn’t be long now.

Being drunk was like slipping into a well-worn sweater. Maru ran his fingers along the edge of the case, feeling at the edges of the future with his brain even as he traces shapes with his fingers. If he chose to stand up now no one would notice. If he punched the man next to him it would start a fight with Junno in the middle.

The man on the other side of him wouldn’t drink anything but the cheapest brew all night staring at the pint like there was something he lost in the bottom. Junno’s future was a truly dizzying mix of half-formed intentions somewhere between sex and drugs and more than a fair bit of violence. It made his head spin in a not entirely unpleasant way.

“Hey,” Maru flagged the man and gave him a smile. “The whole bottle, would you?” There was a moment of indecision but Maru could see the future and he knew how this was going to turn out.

“Hey, honey-bunny.” Junno gave him a winning smile as Maru slid up next to him. He reached for the bottle but Maru pre-empted him jerking it just out the brush of Junno’s fingers. Something which he resorted to when he was feeling petty, small victories and all that.

“It’s mine, get your own, _honey_.” Maru snapped. Vodka was clear and he needed the clarity of it all. It was bothering him, something insidious worming under his skin like an infection. It was like being out of control. Something picking at his brain all morning, a soreness he couldn’t stretch out. Fear, the constant fear that he couldn’t stay one step ahead forever despite all the obvious ways he could. “I’m going home.”

“There is always room for one more at the party. It’s the kind of party with the best loot bags.” Junno leered. Maru was assaulted with the image of him stuck between them, Carmine who was petite for whatever the fuck she was and Junno—he mentally back-pedaled, sending a narrow eyed glare at his partner. For all he knew, those could have been Carmine’s intentions, she was smiling like the cat who got the pretty canary.

“Catch you later.” Maru said, and he swore he could feel Junno’s eyes on his back all the way out slipping away like so much water.

He hailed a cab and had it drive around aimlessly to throw off anyone who might have seen him for a bit while he nursed his bottle of vodka and watched the lights reflect in neon patterns on the rain-streaked glass. There was probably a valid scientific reason why going on the mother of all benders extended the reach and scope of his precognition but he didn’t know it. Division might know; they were in the business of trying to boost powers until it killed the test subjects ten cases out of ten.

“Fuck.” Maru hissed, watching the walls lurch and sway as their living room spun around him. There wasn’t anything quite as foul as drinking vodka from the bottle no matter how nice a brand it was.

He could still see him lurking in the darker corners of the future. Dark eyes and too-pink lips, smile jagged and always wanting. _Division_. “Fuck fuck, shit fuck.” Not only Division but arguably the only part he wanted to see least, aside from the obvious torture chambers. Every path, every choice led back to the same thing; only there was _always_ a choice the future wasn’t locked in stone or Maru would go mad with it. The dive off the sharp edge of a skyscraper was always a comforting thought.

The future wasn’t straight forward, not the distant future conflicted by too many choices and possibilities clogging his brain with static. The smooth trail of a gun down the bare skin of his arms. People screaming as the world burned. Heat and the sharpest stab of grief he could imagine. Everything just out of his reach and Koyama circling over everything like a hungry vulture.

Junno came home in a clatter of sound what could have minutes or what could have been hours later. Maru pressed his palms to his eye sockets and tried to keep his brain and their future from bleeding out of his ears.

“What’s the word, my Cassandra?”

“Fuck off.” Maru groaned.

Junno moved towards the kitchen, shedding his shoes and jacket in an uneven trail across the floor. Maru sagged back against the ratty couch intent on trying to lose himself in the pounding of blood through his temples.

One moment everything was hazy-good, and the next each future shut down one by one all leading to pain and death and the almost painless slide of a sharp knife through his jugular. The shock was so sudden that he couldn’t breathe for a long harsh moment, digging his fingers into the material of the cushion as if he could keep himself from flying away in the gravitational pull of the room spinning. That lasted for a full second longer than it should have. He was swearing as he launched himself gracelessly off the couch landing with a thick sound and half crawling and half scrambling towards the bedrooms.

“What?” Junno peeked out of the kitchen, shirtless and frowning.

“Stay.” Maru snarled, pushing himself to his feet. Well he tried his legs tangled together and he ran into the doorway hard enough to bounce off of it and into Junno’s room in a graceless heap. He closed the door as softly as he could just as the hammering on their front door started.

Maru sat, back against the door head between his knees and focused on not being sick. The side of his face burned and throbbed, and his hands were shaking with panic.

“Ah, guests.” Junno said and Maru hadn’t the time to tell him anything. He had to trust that Junno could handle it on his own. “I’d say good morning, gentlemen, but it’s not really morning yet, is it?” He said pleasantly enough, his words slurred as if he were terribly drunk. Maru’s breathing was sharp and shallow, the sounds filtering through the door muffled but clear enough to make out.

“I’m sorry for the late hour,” said a voice as slick as butter. Maru clenched his fist trying to stop the shaking.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Junno slurred happily enough.

“Don’t fuck with us; I am in no mood for it.” A second voice chimed in, irritated to the other’s easy sleaze. Maru knew that tone of voice well, familiar as the tang of bile on the back of his tongue. The good-cop bad-cop routine was old as dirt. “It wouldn’t end well for you.”

“Mexican standoffs never do.” Junno replied easily enough. “Did you wanna come in? I’ve got some fine treats.”

“That’s not what we’re here for.” There was a sharp sound, something smacked, he just hoped it wasn’t someone hitting Junno because he wasn’t known for his restraint at the best of times. His head throbbed with the futures spinning out of control all ending with him in one of the too-white cells that division kept their pets, and a bullet in his brain.

Junno hummed a low and lewd sound. “Pray tell.”

“Just a _friendly_ reminder to watch your step.” It wasn’t subtle, a show of power to dissuade any local players from making a move. Division was up to something. _Burning. The city was burning to the ground and Junno was dancing in the flames and laughing._

“Just call me twinkle toes.”

“ _Catch you later,_ twinkle toes.”

The door slammed hard enough to rattle the walls and echo inside Maru’s head. The future seemed suddenly a lot less immediately threatening like someone had let all the pressure out of the room. Maru promptly vomit all over the floor.

“Gross.” Junno whined suddenly sounding a lot less drunk.

 

\--

 

 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Maru swore emphatically as he moved around his room, shoving clothes in his backpack. Wardrobe-wise, it was a pretty hapless pile but Maru was sick of stopping for the necessities whenever they moved.

His door creaked loudly as Junno pushed it open with the tip of his index finger. When Maru shot him a glance, he leaned against his door jamb, arms folded. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Packing.”

“Why?”

Maru zipped up the bag briskly, taking a heavy breath. The vodka still sort of sizzled in his veins with the fear adrenaline and he was on the cusp of that sluggish after-burn. He looked over at Junno again who was watching him with that usual deliberately curious expression. “You know what Division’s after. They were _here_ , Junno, and they’re still close. If those guys were the same presence following us earlier then we’ve got to go _now_...” He trailed off at the disdainful expression flitting across Junno’s face.

“Or we could just, you know, not,” Junno stated with a casual lilt in his tone.

Maru was on the verge of a reply but instead he looked down at his backpack in a sudden puzzlement. He stared at his fingers on the bag’s zipper. “What was I...” he began uncertainly. It was absurd. Why had he wanted to leave? Why would he be standing there telling Junno how much this had rattled him. His whole ‘act now’ bit seemed so ludicrous suddenly.

He pulled back from his bag, reaching up to rub at the side of his head pensively. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I thought we--” He happened to glance at Junno; it must have been what bloomed over his vision, Junno holding him down, gun to his clavicle and it was just a quick, passing glance.

Junno stared at him, unsmiling, eyes practically flooded black.

“I told you not to do that anymore,” Maru ground through his teeth.

“You’ll just have to make it easier for both of us then,” Junno replied simply, his irises flushing brown as he blinked again. Junno logic. Control him like this instead of handcuffing him to a radiator. And he would, with alarming ease, hurt Maru until he begged.

A tense and angry moment passed. Maru expelled a heavy breath, looking away from Junno’s stare. “Fine. What’ve you got in mind?”

“Answers.” Junno replied smoothly and strode over to perch on the edge of Maru’s rickety single bed, kicking his socked feet against the ratty carpet.

Maru interjected. “I have no--”

“I _swear_ , being a know-it-all makes you so fucking lazy. You spend more time worrying about the things your powers don’t let you see than the things you can find out on your own.” Junno slurred emphatically. “You say someone’s following us, then let’s find out the who’s and why’s.”

Maru sighed. It was perplexing when Junno was right. The universe was rattling on its own hinges. “Lead the way then.”

Junno stretched back on the heels of his hands behind him and smiled at Maru instead. He smiled very simply while looking up from under a shock of what was now a mess of a fringe. Maru sat in a flash-second image that made his lower stomach knot up a little.

Junno’s magnetically hot gaze was a sensory-memory trigger all on its own without Maru seeing it in his head. It came over him like twisted impressions of a wet tongue scraping up his throat, fingers digging in his spine just deep enough to shake him further past a memory to the point where it was new. The future. And it was only a moment away. In his current antsy and electric state, all it’d really take is Junno reaching for him.

Junno emitted a faint charge of suggestions and practiced little promises that usually had Maru downright dizzy by the end of it. “Don’t,” Maru said warningly, ears hot.

Junno made a face. “Aww, but you’re so much yummier when you’re all jittery and shaken.”

Maru rolled his eyes so hard it almost hurt as he emptied out his backpack, tossing it against the closet.

“Frothy,” Junno went on, eyes following him. “I’ll call it the milkshake effect. I can wait though.”

It seemed just intolerable that a looker like Junno with a body that was straight kinetic would have the ability to Push on top of it. Unfair even. Maru stalked off to the kitchen to get some water so he could hopefully sober up a bit and pass out.

“And as far as our little stalker goes, we’ll work it out in broad daylight and a heavy crowd,” Junno called after him.

Maru swallowed cold water, suddenly more focused on the fact that he _couldn’t_ see Junno jumping his bones anytime in the immediate future. It was annoying that he’d come to expect it without getting a brand new image of it in living colour and twice as much when he wanted it.

 

\--

 

Later, just on the cusp of morning as the edges of the faded drapes glowed a deep blue, Maru slid naked under Junno’s covers because it was easy. The vodka numbness all around his mouth was swallowed up by Junno lips and tongue and he tasted like candies and cigarettes.

On the subject of choices after three a.m., Junno was secretly his favourite one. Sometimes it was just Maru wanting to get him in his mouth and suck him off until he felt Junno crumple under him, but this time he was as pent up as something stretched elastic thin.

Junno was good to go like a switchblade. Long arms crowded Maru and fingers pushed until they could fold Maru in half.

“Wanna shake?” Junno laughed against his collarbone.

Maru shivered. “God, would you just--” He rolled and pushed Junno against the pillows with a suffocating and wet drunken kiss.

“Mmm, yes please,” Junno breathed in reply. He licked him up, and writhed nicely when Maru raked his blunt fingernails over the back of neck. Junno kicked the covers off with a little hum of satisfaction, getting a handful of his ass and squeezing before flipping Maru on his back again, successfully winding him. It was rare, and never sober with them and it was the only time Junno could get that explosive on him, in him.

Maru _needed_ it rough at that point and Junno was always in such a hurry that Maru’s mind was quickly a cluster-fuck of sordid details, the finish before it started, how it’d feel this time, the burning, delectable agony strip of Junno’s fingers inside him and how messy he could have it.

Junno had it all in arm’s reach, lubricant in a bottle. He could always lose himself when Junno was hard and fast because Maru’s whole being went non-linear whenever he was hurtling toward finish. He dripped with Junno’s mouth on him and grabbed sweaty handfuls of Junno’s hair, panting into the muggy bedroom air, trying to shut down predictions and just smoulder in seconds on a backward clock.

The future looked crimson when Junno was inside him. It was like a kaleidoscope view except it sort of burnt the back of his eyelids. The present swirled like the bottom of a blender with the crystallized feeling of coming and the build up as Junno fisted his dick, sliding up him, grasping his ankles with hard fingers and a shark’s smile.

Maru’s ankles slid up Junno’s spine, and he bucked into the sharp bones of Junno’s hips crushing in; the growls and animal teeth on the edge of Maru’s mouth as he fought to keep up with him, hung on for dear life when Junno shuddered in harder, filling him to the brim.

He forgot himself as the mattress breathed beneath them, not sucking in enough air as Junno fucked in a steambattle rhythm, rocking him out, and hissing out half-words, sticky and blistering against the side of his throat. “Rock with me, baby-- god, that’s it.” His hips snapped in like he meant to break him, enveloping his insides with a stretching pulse and Maru made a shock-hungry mewl that sounded like someone far away.

He came like it was raked out of him, fingers tight to the lines and muscles under skin as Junno fucked him through it. He reeled from the floating sense of deja vu that came with his premonitions of it already cutting through him. Still intoxicated, and dizzy, now coated with a sheen of sweat but he trembled as Junno moaned his end against Maru’s throat, teeth clenched like he couldn’t take it.

He’d stare at the ceiling, thighs aching and shaking as Junno panted against his neck, wavering in and out of sleep. His head spun explosively as he tried to gain bearings on what was the now.

The now was feeling very much alive and this fucking scared of a tomorrow.

 

\--

 

The family diner down the street was practically empty mid-morning so Junno didn’t go for conspicuity as he burst in the entrance, making a beeline for Maru already settled in a booth by the window.

Smiling the usual, he slapped what looked like an earpiece on the diner table in front of Maru’s plate. The idiot had stolen nearly a million yen the night before and would probably keep shoplifting out of habit. “Guess what!” he said triumphantly, looking like he’d been running all thrill of the chase and pink cheeks.

Maru couldn’t really curb his grin, swallowing a mouthful of bread. “You’re gonna have me watch you from a vantage point.” Junno had walked right into it anyway. “And locate... the guy following us and communicate all this through this stolen bluetooth?”

Junno chewed his lower lip, disappointment written in sharp relief over his features. He sighed, dropping into the seat opposite, looking all of seven years. “Fucking Watcher. This is why we don’t do secret santa.”

“Mm. You’d go to great lengths to steal me some ketamine and you’d tell me it would’ve been sixty dollars a gram ,” Maru muttered just to be contrary, picking up the small earpiece to examine it. “And naturally, I wouldn’t like it.”

Junno rested an elbow on the table, his cheek on his palm, grinning. “That’s a fantastic idea, and you know I’d _make_ you like it, yeah?”

“Touché,” Maru dead-panned, finishing his breakfast. He couldn’t even see how this went, but he was well-rested and feeling a bit like raising some kind of hell for all his night before had been riddled with paranoias and pain. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

 

\--

 

“What about E? Last time you were stoned you said you saw the end of some film neither of us had even heard of,” Junno’s inexcusably happy warble buzzed in Maru’s ear over the sounds of crowds and traffic. “...That was funny.”

“I’m trying to concentrate here,” Maru hissed back in the receiver, scanning the crowd from the low store rooftop. Junno was distinctive, long-limbed and walking a bit spider-like in ridiculous spurts of speed as he wound past shoulders and crosswalks.

Maru wasn’t telling him, but he was looking for a familiar face more than someone who just seemed shady. He knew it. Deep down in his gut, he couldn’t really kid himself, but his sanity told him to doubt if even just the smallest amount. He didn’t like to think if it was a matter of setting himself up for a morbid sense of disappointment.

“Or just plain old methadone. That stuff will fuck you up proper--!”

“Junno! Quit trying to up-sell me drugs you don’t even have and focus on looking normal for once!” Maru snapped.

The people around Junno twisted around in distress when he broke into his high, delighted laughter. Maru put down his binoculars and resorted to an interchange between looking directly at a possible future or really looking for someone dumb enough to follow Junno’s manic stride.

“Nothing so far on this end,” Junno remarked after a pause. “Crossing the street now.”

Maru blinked. “I’m watching you,” he informed him. “You know, you don’t need to tell me every time you do somethi-” and watched him step to the curb, looking at the passing cars, waiting for the red light on the intersection; ready to jaywalk a street over.

Maru’s binoculars hit the cement before he realised he’d let them go. Flash of a second and it was like a movement in the corner of his eye almost; a future lurking and splayed upside down in a far recess. It struck like a shiver; like staring glassy eyes, spinning blackness and Junno tossed in the air as metal, lights and windshield struck him head on.

“D-don’t--” he gasped out, dropping to his knees as the world around him careened, his mental eye flipping through a jukebox album of images, careening for the right one.

“What?” Junno said, halting abruptly and looking around a bit blindly for him. Maru winced, pulling the phone away when it broke into harsh feedback, a shrill scream and Maru saw the earpiece roll across the pavement, having fallen out of Junno’s ear when he’d moved sharply.

Then he saw. He gripped the stone balustrade of the roof, staring off as he tried to keep breathing. “H-he’s a Mover!” he shouted.

All it’d take is Junno’s one step off the curb and he saw Koyama’s eyes looking soft, almost sad, hand outstretched, invisible strings set to an accelator as the delivery truck waiting at the intersection humming over its brake, ran the light, speeding to kill.

Killer. Koyama would. Maru saw his narrow eyes looking apologetic, arms enclosing Maru like some alien being of emotion and emptiness all at once. Stab wound in his chest and kisses to his bloody lips as he choked on metal.

Maru’s mouth was dry as he got to his feet unsteadily, searching for it, the glint. He’d seen something red. Blood? No, a door. Koyama leaned against it. “Don’t you walk off that curb, you bastard,” Maru willed at Junno, twisting back and scrambling for the fire stairwell.

He didn’t remember how he’d got down so fast. His knee was burning with pain where he’d struck it against the ladder. He must’ve pushed a hundred people as he ran for it. Screams when his gun was drawn. Junno far off ahead, locked eyes with him finally, his stare hard and deadly.

Then Maru was looking right at Koyama, squinting and looking confused at the sudden melee. Maru twisted through the crowd, passing Junno at breakneck speed. He had to get to him quick before he changed anything; before he could vanish like that again; intentions shifting carefully.

Then Koyama saw him, and looked immediately stricken, all the futures melted still for seconds before Maru ploughed right into him, slamming him against the door, feeling his oddly delicate frame crush to cement and brick as he fell under him. He held Koyama’s arms down and tried to get him to still, to stop thinking, stop...

Koyama fought him, elbow to his chest and the sweep of objects grazing him. Maru’s glock went skittering across the sidewalk as people screamed and a whistle sounded. Their eyes locked and beneath the desperation, there was nothing. Maru looked for hatred, something but all he felt was the pain as Koyama’s fingernails connected with the side of his throat.

“Hold him still!” he heard Junno holler.

Maru straddled him, grabbing his wrists and he heard footsteps behind him before Koyama went suddenly limp.

Panic seized him briefly as Koyama’s fox-like brown-eyed stare went vacant. Then he realised Junno had a grasp on him. Had pushed him to be still.

“Someone’s called the cops. Maru, let’s go!” Junno barked. Maru fell back as Koyama got to his feet, eyes locked to Junno seeming captivated, mouth parted. Maru swallowed the metallic taste in his mouth as he scrambled up.

“You’ll come with me,” Junno said in naturally soft tones and grabbed Koyama, long fingers closing on his upper arm, their gazes centered in one world instantly, eye to eye with Koyama looking so eerily empty.

They ran.


	2. One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Live for the moment’ is a good motto when you’re not a Watcher. Maru can see the future and it’s looking pretty grim.

As they scarpered up the street, Maru kept a slightly awed gaze fixed on Koyama. It had been two years. He was thinner, if at all possible and his hair was longer.

He now knew how Koyama had done it. How all that’d slip right past him if Koyama thought off doing things affecting the people around them, switching to different faces, each one surrounding Junno and him. Follow one woman walking their way; do nothing and glance at him. It was eerily easy. Koyama knew him inside; his ticks and his tells.

They ducked around people, Junno tugging Koyama along beside him, eyes full black looking almost sightless but they moved as one, eerily in synch, steps the same time and length as Junno used Koyama’s body like a puppet.

“We need a quick exit, Maru, and we need it now,” Junno huffed. Koyama stared blankly.

He scanned the future, slowing them to a walk so he could focus better, letting the scenery around him blur into indistinct shapes. Decision to turn here, red and blue flashing lights. Yes? Don’t turn there, intentions, Junno’s plans were getting in the way, and images of chaos and destruction on a grand scale.

“Here.” The hotel was mid-scale expensive enough for clean sheets but not so expensive that they stood out in a crowd.

“I’ll get us a room.”

Maru was impressed. Junno’s control on Koyama didn’t slip once while he extended his influence to the teller. Just long enough to get a key and be going upstairs.

“He’s not going to hold forever.” Junno grit his teeth and Maru nodded, wished they had brought something better to hold him. Immediate future only, impossible to tell what Koyama was planning, his future was a blank slate. Maru pulled a switch blade from his pocket and shred the sheets into ropes they could use to bind him to the chair.

“Now sit like a good boy.” Junno grinned, pinching his chin between long fingers and staring with that all-seeing sightless gaze at him. Something flared hot under Maru’s skin but he was hesitant to try and put a name to it. That would be far too telling.

He had Koyama bound to the chair, cut off a shorter length and tied it around his eyes.

“Kinky.” Junno smirked and Maru scoffed at him.

“It’ll stall his abilities.”

“Right.” Junno drew the word out like stretching bubble gum and Maru grit his teeth, tying the knot off hard. He ducked just in time to avoid the back of Koyama’s head slamming into his nose, pure instinct having him move just a fraction of a second faster as Junno released his hold.

“Where am I?” Koyama’s mouth formed that little pout, and Junno’s grin melted across his face.

“If Division sent bait like you I’d have come in long ago.” Junno purred and Maru glared hard at him trying to explain his displeasure with his eyes only.

“Let me look at you with the pretty voice.” Koyama replied all coquettish and coy. Maru rubbed his temples, feeling sick. Futures like implications spilling everywhere while he tried to keep everything between his palms.

Junno’s intentions were lurid and vivid while Koyama’s were blank, playing his cards close to his chest.

“With this pretty voice I could make you do anything, I could make you really want it, what would you do for me?” Junno replied threatening with a soft amused voice, rolling the words off his tongue silkily.

Koyama’s mind exploded with movement, panic over-riding his calm. The chair he was attached to rattled, eluding the grasp of his power. Maru grit his teeth against it. “Koyama, stop.”

He stilled, head tilting to the side slightly. A sudden smile curved his pretty pink mouth. Blindfolded and tied to a chair, it was more like looking into the past than any possible future. There was a touch of destiny in the fact that the last time he’d seen Koyama it had been a different chair and a different blindfold, but that didn’t matter.

“Missed you.” Koyama said softly.

Maru frowned and Junno wiggled his eyebrows at him. Maru shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it. Talk about the way that Koyama clung, sharp nails and long legs always so needy and ready for it.

“This all seems a little déjà vu.” Koyama continued tugging on his wrists and kicking out his legs. Koyama’s panic settled into calculated blankness, like he was confident that Maru wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

“I should have shot you,” Maru snarled.

“Probably,” Koyama agreed, pouting.

“But then we wouldn’t be having so much fun.” Junno said, running one finger down Koyama’s cheek. The knife came out of nowhere, tracing an almost sensual line down Koyama’s long neck. “Now are you going to be a good little boy and tell me what I need to know?”

“Depends on what you want to know.” Koyama let the words pop from his mouth teasing each word like snapping twigs, almost flirty. It was amazing how the years hadn’t dulled what he remembered about Koyama at all. Careless charm and easy grace; flirting like breathing.

“Let’s start with an easy one: who are you?”

“His name is Koyama and he’s a Mover for the retrieval Division.” Maru answered before Koyama could open his mouth.

“Keiichiro, please.” He smiled. Maru caught a flash, the legs of the bed screeching as it crashed into their knees.

“Don’t even think about it.” Maru hissed, the intention faded into the background. “Why are you following us?”

“Not him, you.” Koyama smiled. “You, I miss you. No one fucks me the way you did.”

Fantasies flared to life behind his eyes, bleeding across the future, Junno slitting Koyama’s throat and gloating as he gasped and bled out. Of stabbing his knife deep into his stomach and whispering sweet nothing as Koyama died. Maru swallowed thickly, the intention ebbed gradually as the territorial impulse faded.

Junno just smiled at him.

“Division paid us a little visit last night. That wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with you, would it?” He let just the tip of his knife rest in the too-sharp dip of Koyama’s throat. His breathing stuttered but his expression didn’t change.

“Did they? Now that’s interesting. I wonder what they don’t want you to find? So very many secrets and so little time.”

“Does this have anything to do with project Hitchcock?” Junno asked.

The words triggered a faint impression, something half remembered from a dream. Heat and fire, people screaming as they burned alive.

Maru blinked at Junno but the tall man just shook his head. Koyama didn’t have a lot of tells, but the way his lips tightened and the half pause before he spoke again gave him away. “That’s not one I’ve heard before.”

“Oh?” Junno mocked.

“Honestly.”

“So you’re telling me this is a booty call?” Maru hissed, wished he’d not lost his gun, only Koyama knew the shape of guns, could manipulate them without his eyes. It was one of his best party tricks and one of the many reasons he’d been the golden child of Division. Unfailingly loyal and ruthlessly efficient when he was on the hunt.

“Brilliant isn’t it?” And Division had given him to Maru, all young, hot-eyed and eager to please.

“Only, I know you’re lying. Who do you think is faster? Could you take us both down before Junno could Push you? He’s a slick one and you’d be completely at his mercy.” Maru didn’t even try and hide the threat in his words, let them loom as they would.

Junno looked up at him from under his eyelashes, all fake-coy and pleased with him. Maru bit his bottom lip against the flush of pleasure. When he shifted his weight he could feel the bruises on his hips and the water-colour-blur memory of Junno fucking him into the mattress. It was neither here nor there; a non-factor.

“Do you remember Satoshi?” Maru nodded before he remembered Koyama couldn’t see him.

“Crazy as fuck.” Maru muttered, possibly the strongest watcher in the entire world but it’d tore him apart left him babbling nonsense between his jello-based meals. Division only kept him to run tests from time to time as a way of trying to boost the signals from the future.

“That one, told me to meet him for a good time.” Koyama’s mouth twisted in a weird little smile. “Instead I overheard some interesting things. Satoshi tells me that we’re going to crash, that if something doesn’t change it ends in fire. Then the world burns. Followed by something about ground hogs and shadows but it is impossible to tell what’s connected with him.”

“You’ve still not explained why you were following me.” Maru frowned. What happened in Division was none of his business; his business was staying out of theirs. If his beautiful lady Tokyo was going to burn, well Hong Kong was supposed to be nice this time of year.

“The Hypno drug.”

Junno perked up at that, eyes going alert and Maru shivered.

“I destroyed that. Completely.” He’d burned the place to the ground and would have pissed on the ashes if he hadn’t needed to run. He might understand why Division didn’t like him much.

“Tell me about the drug,” Junno was practically humming.

“It’s related to Project Hitchcock.” Koyama admit.

Junno looked particularly satisfied with himself.

“And I want you to stop it.”

“No.” Maru said immediately while Junno gave him a quizzical look. “I’m done with Division.”

“No one is ever free of Division.” There wasn’t a shred of remorse in Koyama’s voice; still Division’s dog no matter how many times he was kicked.

“I am.” Maru snarled, standing. “Let’s go.”

“No.” Junno said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Maru stopped, squinting at Junno. “He’s dangerous.”

“Babe, aren’t we all?” Junno gave him that sharp smile flash of teeth and a threat. Remember who belongs to who, Maru bristled opening his mouth to explain in vivid detail why this would end in death and destruction on a scale big enough even Junno couldn’t find it a turn-on.

Only he choked, shocked with the sudden image of Koyama with his legs twined around Junno’s waist, back arched as Junno slammed into him. It was half familiar like well-worn photographs all stuck together. There wasn’t the normal flavour of intent, impossible to tell if it was one of them who wanted it or destiny’s way of slapping him in the face. The image melted into a hail of gunfire, the loud pop of the mirror shattering, shards spinning in a hurricane around the room. A Bleeder stood in the middle of it, face torn to shreds by the glass and screaming, even the echo of it made Maru’s teeth ache. He hated bleeders, so little regard for friend and foe, supersonic screams capable of shattering glass and people one and the same.

“Maru?” Junno was in his face suddenly not so much concern as curiosity.

“Sniffers, coming here.”

“That’s our cue.” He moved towards Koyama.

“Leave him, they’re after him -not us.” Maru snarled.

“No!” Koyama struggled against his bonds. “Please, don’t leave me.” The chair he was tied to rattled, trying to shake itself apart. “They’ll kill me.”

“Koyama knows me, he would be the perfect bait; I can’t trust the future,” Maru snapped, pacing a short circuit across the carpet of the room.

Junno barely gave him notice, decision made too quickly for Maru to follow in the shifting visions of the future. He sliced through the blindfold with a flick of his wrist. With his other hand he gripped Koyama’s hair, tugging it sharply so he was staring deep into his eyes. “I can help you,” he whispered soft and comforting. “I will help you, but only if you’re a good boy for me. You want to be a good boy. It would hurt you if you lied.”

Koyama stared at him eyes wide and faintly vacant, enough control of his body to answer but still in Junno’s thrall. “Help me please. They will hurt me. I need you, Yuichi.”

Maru froze, glaring hard at Koyama as he blinked, coming back to himself with a shake. He flushed under the wan lighting. He sat completely still while Junno uncut him from the chair and reducing he sheets to so many pieces of ribbon.

“If we take the fire escape we can slip them.” Maru reached out, focusing on the sniffer looking focused and intent like a hunting dog. They were going to need to move far and fast if they wanted to stay ahead of them. Koyama stood, rubbing his wrists and ignoring the faintly red lines the knife made on his neck where Junno let it slide just against his skin.

“We’re not done chatting.” Junno said, stepping into Koyama’s personal space, trademark loom diminished a bit by the fact that Koyama was almost as tall as him.

They snuck out down the hall, Maru in front and Junno in the back, keeping Koyama contained between them. Down the stairs, there was a back way. Maru stopped just at the corner flattening himself against it, shoving Koyama back as he pressed as forward as much as he could without being discovered.

On the other side something snuffled. “Passed this way, Watcher says there is a chance he’s found someone to hide him.”

“There was a scene a few blocks from here, police recovered an illegal gun. Not sure if it’s connected yet. Yakuza run this turf and they don’t like us much.” Someone else answered the first voice, faint but just clear enough to make out words.

Maru didn’t move, barely even breathed, his nails digging into his palms. The future held itself on a balance, tipping dangerously back and forth. The bad guys were intent on finding Koyama, and Maru wanted to shove him out there and run. With a barely-there sigh he let the immediate fight in the lobby fade into a remote possibility.

He darted out, and Koyama followed him, years of working together had both of them following in his wake easily. The alarm screamed when he hit the door; tripping the fire alarm in the whole building. Maru took off running again, tripping down the alley and onto the street.

Not left.

Maru turned right.

That quickly spiraled into a bad idea.

“One Mover with a gun and a Sniff up ahead.” Maru panted, “can’t avoid them.”

“Leave it to me.”

Maru almost didn’t see it until too late, an echo of sound before the gunshot ripped through the air.

It deflected off the air around a lady, she screamed, dropping her shopping and running for it. Koyama stepped up in front of them, hands raised and the second shot stopped in mid-air while Koyama flinched back. Well that was new.

Junno moved quickly, sliding around Koyama to peek out from behind him, one hand splayed against his stomach and using his thin body like a shield.

“Listen to me honey,” Junno purred, “that man, that evil man. Remember how he ripped your pretty little heart to shreds? Loved you and left you so cold. Remember that?”

“Yes.” The sniff lowered her gun looking dazed.

“Are we going to stand for that? Let him do that to another woman?”

“No.” She snarled cocking her gun.

“Don’t listen to him!” Her partner deflected the first bullet, waving his hand and throwing up a shield by hardening the air.

The sign posts rattled, Koyama hissed something wordless.

“Kill the bastard.” Junno said. The Sniff emptied her clip at her partner while he threw up a shield to block her. He wasn’t strong enough to maintain the shield as well as stop Koyama from Moving the pole. He lost the tug of war with Koyama and the sign post came down with a crash on top of him there was a snap of bones and the echoing boom of metal bouncing off of pavement. “Now sleep.” Junno put all his command into the tone and she collapsed like wet bag.

They ran. By touching nothing it wasn’t impossible to evade a sniff. Watchers on the other hand are difficult to evade, but they would need some time to get a lock. Time enough to get answers.

Maru led them through alleys into the newer parts of East Shinjuku until he could turn a corner into an underground shopping mall parkade. Junno puffed, slowing down and giving the area a sweeping look.

“We need to find a Shadow. I don’t know if they have the Sniffer on him or us,” Maru breathed, feeling his legs beginning to give out.

“I think I know a guy who knows a guy, but first we need to get far,” Junno replied, also significantly out of breath. “And fast, real fast.”

Maru leaned against a pillar, trying to think clearly. It was about compartmentalising the mess of his brain, futures, the flash-images of Junno’s fingers trailing against the sleek carbon-fiber paint of some car and Koyama choosing not to make a break for it. He tried to see the people tailing them but nothing was clear. There were too many factors involved and it was the three of them together.

If Maru’s suspicions over who was tailing them were correct, then it meant that Koyama was their target, and that meant Koyama was definitely a runaway. He could also see in his mind’s eye-- like watching from the end of a tunnel-- the melt of Koyama’s body against Junno’s as his lips pressed hard and hungry impressions. Maru could feel like he was there, and it triggered an almost vindictive pull in his chest. Maru still couldn’t trust Koyama as far as Junno could throw him and it was much of the reason he wouldn’t look at Koyama when he leaned against the wall beside him.

“Anyone else seriously feeling this Murciélago?” Junno hummed from somewhere behind them. “Oh, this is hot.”

Maru could feel Koyama looking at him; on the verge of saying something he knew he wouldn’t like. He twisted around to look at Junno pawing a little beggingly at a ridiculously conspicuous, bright pearl metallic green Lamborghini. “I want her,” Junno said pitifully at it.

“It’s probably alarmed, Junno. In fact it is...” Maru sighed, getting to his feet again. “Even you couldn’t break into it and disarm it quickly enough. Let’s keep moving.”

The locks clicked abruptly to the point where Maru could hear them unhinge. Maru looked instinctively at Koyama. He had his narrow gaze fixed on the car, eyes swimming as several other things snapped. His mouth curved into a distracted smile as Junno hopped out of the way when the door swung open, the engine revving to life.

“Disarmed and all yours,” Koyama stated coolly, walking over to lean a bit like a pin-up model on the hood.

Junno beamed at him. “You’ll spoil me.”

Koyama’s tongue poked out the corner of his mouth, smiling coy. “Oh, I think you need spoiling.”

Maru could’ve bristled a bit at that, but he was drained and not a little relieved that Koyama had trained his wicked claws on Junno at the moment. Plus it was more alarming to notice that Koyama had gotten even stronger since he’d last seen him.

Junno slipped behind the wheel, sinking into the sleek leather and touching the wheel like a lover would.

“Maru~ hop in!” Junno prompted exuberantly, laying his foot on the pedal.

“It’s only a two-seater,” Maru observed a bit haplessly.

 

\--

 

A lapful of Koyama later, Maru gripped the edges of his seat and tried not shift too much as Junno pushed the gear into drive and he felt himself almost plastered to the back of the seat with momentum as they gunned forward. Whoever owned the car last was very into grunge and it blasted through surround speakers. With Koyama all sharp angles and sprawled all over him, Maru couldn’t reach the volume.

Junno made an ecstatic noise when the engine purred a pretty vibration. Junno drove like he did everything. Maddening speeds reached in minutes as he twiddled the wheel under the heel of his hand, other fisting the stick shift. When he said real fast, he meant it. They were winding between cars within seconds, barely clipping the turnpike as the wheels cradled the curb..

Maru despised cars actually. He hated how quickly things moved when he was behind the wheel of one, moreso when someone else was behind it. The sheer number of intentions and signals that swooped in on him between the space of a flashing green light to the next intersection. It got worse a moment later when Junno made an impatient sound and quite literally drove over a boulevard partition.

“Please don’t get us killed!” he hollered over the mess of guitar riffs singeing his ear drums.

He shut his eyes, trying to breathe steadily as Junno took them off the main street onto the wider streets of an industrial park. Koyama draped an arm over Maru’s shoulder, smelling like musk, heat and melons, somehow managing to make the act of spreading his thighs over Maru’s knee and relaxing the arch of his spine against Maru’s chest seem unconscious.

Maru clenched his teeth and glared, no longer able to make words as the future hurtled up at him in the form of burning metal and flying car wreckage. He turned his head in at Koyama’s ear, the tips of his hair tickling the bridge of his nose. “Stop it,” his said. It came out a whisper; it could have been tender.

The corners of Koyama’s mouth turned up when the heel of his hand slipped back, ran along the fabric of Maru’s shirt, rode it up a little and his wrist grazed with some purpose as he pretended to find a comfortable position. Maru caught at it, squeezing. “I said quit it.”

Koyama shot him a close quarters look. “Or what?” That look. Still the same as Maru remembered it. Moments before they’d be a tangle of limbs, agonising rhythms to the finish and then broken, residual breaths.

This was too distracting.

“Fuck, Junno, are you driving us to the next city or what?” Maru snapped. “We’re far enough.”

Junno looked reluctant, eyes bright with excitement and seemingly surprised to see them there beside him, but he nodded, turning off the main streets on toward the shopping district.

“I need a payphone,” he said, flicking off the music and Maru’s nerves settled. “...call this guy I know.”

 

\--

 

It was more awkward than a blind date. Koyama and he sat opposite each other in the middle of a noisy pub-- Maru pointedly not speaking to him. Junno was over at the front counter, yapping with some annoyance into the public phone. He looked like he was acting out a vivid retelling of a Webster play, dwindling sanity included. Maru sipped his lager and watched the exits.

Koyama leaned over the table. “You’re angry with me.” His tone was honey.

“Astute of you.”

“No, I mean, you’re really angry. I don’t get it. You’re the one that left, literally disappeared in a cloud of smoke.” Koyama replied, matter of fact, and vaguely wondering. “You used up all of one night to go ballistic on me, then they told me you’d left.”

“You know I wanted to leave for a long time,” he said, glancing back at Junno who had now turned his back, muscles tensed. Who was he arguing with?

“Division took care of you; they kept you happy; gave you everything you ever needed.”

Maru shot him a glare, registering the abrupt intensity in Koyama’s gaze. He looked scared, desperate. He was arguing to convince himself of something. Against his own disillusionment with Division. “Is that why you ran away?”

“It’s your fault.” Koyama’s fists were clenched on his lap from what Maru could see. “You infected me with your twisted ideas of some made up ideal about right and wrong when that’s really the least of the issues you have.”

Maru surveyed him. Koyama was on the verge of something. He was getting glimmers of it, his own hands shaking, fingers wrapped around a key. A detonator. A memory or a future. God, he was scared all over again.

“How on earth am I expected to help you?” he demanded abruptly.

Koyama’s lips formed a thin line. “Not you; not like this. Whoever you are right now won’t be enough, you’ll have to--”

“There’s a house in Akasaka where a powerful Shadow has put himself up for hire,” Junno announced, looking harried. He glanced between them as he stepped close.

 

\--

 

Another strained car ride. Koyama obviously wasn’t feeling as fond of him because he kept his hands to himself and Junno seemed distracted.

Junno’s contact, a bit of a thing; also a Shadow quite apparently, wanted payment up front. Maru only saw him from afar as he herded Koyama inside and Junno continued what was clearly the argument he’d been having over the phone.

“All of what’s in your pocket or no dice!” his angry friend was stating emphatically.

“I don’t know why I even tell you anything.” Junno was getting huffy as he rifled in his pockets

“Because you’re a braggart; now fork it over!”

Koyama dropped into the sofa as Maru went around the smallish, non-descript house and lowered all the blinds. When he finished, he simply began pacing. He knew it didn’t mean much if a Shadow was blinding the Sniffers from seeing the house, but it felt good to do something besides sit in steely silence with Koyama.

It didn’t seem to deter Koyama himself otherwise as he perched on the edge of the sofa, fingers laced over his knees, no longer as miffed with him as two minutes ago. So changeable. “You know when I first caught sight of you-- spotted you in the middle of a crowd-- walking after your Pusher, an angry, besotted Watcher. I thought ‘Ah, Yuu got over me so quickly,’ but then I realised that everything you must like about him... is what you very much liked about me.”

Maru was at the end of his tether, hoping a little viciously that Junno would come back in a strop, wanting to break something. Koyama looked very brittle at the moment.

“After all, I used to be able to make you do things too, except I didn’t need a power for that.”

Maru ran his fingers through his hair pensively, irritation bristling every part of him. “Shut up,” he muttered.

“Does he use it on you?” Koyama said, musingly, eyes following him around the room. “Bet you like that.”

Maru snapped. “I swear to god, I will lock you in a different room and gag you ‘til you learn to shut up on your own! Or I could choke you to death; I really would! Bet you’d really like that!”

Koyama’s husky laugh filled the room, his smile was there like every horrible memory Maru could possibly keep in his head and it made him angry how he missed it. Broken test tubes, flames and screams. Not that. The secrets Division kept and the people whose lives they’d destroyed and the choices, how choices disappeared with one word.

Then there was him with a detonator. Koyama’s pleading gaze and Junno’s glazed, mad as bats smile. He could already feel the flames and the smell of kerosene intoxicating him. No, no, no.

He felt a huge blister of pain shoot through his knuckles and blinked at his own fist smashed through the paint and dry wall.

“Found you,” Koyama said at last.

 

 

“He’s got some affect on you,” Junno remarked impassively from the bathroom door.

Maru was perched on the edge of the bathtub. He winced, holding the other end of the bandage in his teeth as he wrapped it tightly around his split knuckles. “You talk to him. I can’t deal with him right now,” he replied bitterly.

“I’m more curious to know what made you destroy something as valuable as the Hypno Drug. You’re well-informed and I never thought to ask you.”

Maru glanced at him. “I wouldn’t have told you.”

“You’re so mean to me,” Junno answered in an unconvincingly sad tone. “Are you gonna help him? Imagine what we could get out of it.”

Maru tied off the bandage. “I can see myself doing something. I saw it back there in the sitting room. Issue is that I still don’t want to.”

“And what’s Project Hitchcock?”

Maru tossed the wrapper into the wastebin vehemently. He was still feeling the leftover acidic lines in his throat from being so god-awful angry. Half-hatred like bile and half like he wanted to give in. See if Koyama would go to Hong Kong with him. “Are you interrogating me now?”

Junno was smiling his threat. “You’re avoiding the question.”

Maru stood, feeling dizzy and drained as ever. “Project Hitchcock probably starts with the Hypno Drug, which was created to boost powers. Division’s pet project; their aim was to make a Push so powerful that it could hit mass crowds. I don’t know what they’re planning to do now because I destroyed it the first time. I...burned records, everything. If they’ve started up again then they’ll only be more determined to finish the job. Only Koyama knows the when’s and where’s and I’m still not interested.”

“Not for all the King’s horses and all the King’s men?”

“This isn’t a game Junno,” Maru sighed, he was just so tired. “Division is poison. They destroy everything, everything and the last time I checked Koyama was theirs.” His head ached, he hadn’t needed to push himself this hard in a long time. Junno was looking at him, mouth pinched in an unfamiliar expression. It evaporated as soon as Maru tried to get a better look at it.

“Everything is a game.” Junno shrugged liquidly, “and you can’t win if you don’t play.”

Maru hung his head swearing as Junno ran a hand down his back and left him alone with his demons. He didn’t want to walk out there; back onto the battlefield but he couldn’t leave Junno alone with Koyama. It was like a nitroglycerine and a trampoline just a disaster waiting to happen.

Koyama was lounging across the low couch, head pillowed on one of the arms and legs stretched out across. Maru hadn’t noticed just how tired he looked until then, a little puppet with its strings cut. Or maybe a pet kicked by its master and left in the cold.

“I’ve got some questions.” Junno took a chair, crossing his long legs over each other. Koyama opened his eyes, tipping his head back to look at Junno better.

“Ask really pretty and I might give you answers,” Koyama purred. Maru leaned against the wall and counted backwards from ten.

“You’d better not lie,” Junno leaned forward in the chair until their faces where so close, Koyama’s upside down, that they could have kissed. “Just remember I can wear you like a glove and I don’t think Maru’s going to stop me.”

Koyama shivered, his eyes going dark, mouth parting in what could be fear or honest arousal. “Ask your questions.” He said, curling back into the couch in an almost sulk.

“What happened to the Hypno drug?” Junno’s eyes were hot and greedy. Maru got flashes of gold and guns-- all the quick, ephemeral things that Junno loved.

“It’s gone now. But it worked, it worked once. Project Hitchcock,” Koyama said it almost dreamily. “They made a recording of Patient Zero before he died.”

“Is that why you ran?” Maru cut in and Koyama stared at him, accusing with his eyes and the defensive twist of his arms over his chest. “Tell me Koyama or, so help me, I am going to leave you to them. Do you remember what they do to traitors?” In Division you were either with them or against them, a pet on a leash or an animal for testing.

“Top secret, they are going to use the original film reel in a cinema, only the original works.” Koyama stared sightlessly at the sky. “Satoshi said the world would burn.”

Maru’s seen it, flashes of a looming decision. An intersection he had been trying to avoid.

Junno was quiet for a long time pensively but Maru wasn’t getting anything from him. Whatever he was thinking about, he wasn’t intent on any one path. The future was still blown painfully wide open, except the few hazy images of ever-present death. “That’s all?” Maru said at last and Koyama hummed.

“I ran and they chased. If the test works they are going to funnel all resources into re-creating the Hypno Effect.” Maru was honestly surprised that Koyama had even managed to get as far as he did. As far as Maru was aware he had always belonged to Division with no concept of how the world worked outside of threats and power-hungry politics.

 

\--

 

The place was small allowing anyone within the walls to be hidden by the aura of the Shadow who stayed a floor above. A brilliant set-up for a Shadow who didn’t want to get involved with whatever they were hiding. No fuss, no muss. It really was nothing more than a single bedroom, the bathroom and the sitting room.

“I was looking for the Hypno Drug when I found you.” Junno said into the dark. Maru hummed, he hadn’t known that. It was weird to be curled on the bed with Junno when he was sober but he hadn’t wanted to sleep on the floor and Junno hadn’t given him a choice.

“I don’t want to know what you’d do with more power.” Maru said back lightly.

“It would be glorious.” Junno hummed, happy.

Maru fell into an exhausted sleep before he could fully contemplate the horror.

Koyama bit off a gasp, Junno’s long fingers fit around his rib cage perfectly as Koyama straddled one of his thighs, arms thrown around Junno’s sharp shoulders. They kissed like Junno was trying to eat Koyama, slick and hungry.

Koyama tore at Junno’s shirt, rocking against his thigh with high breathless sounds while Junno’s hands slid down his chest so one could rest on his thigh and the other splayed across his ass. Junno growled something, biting down on Koyama’s shoulder as he gasped, tugging on Junno’s hair to get him closer, no further, somewhere between the two, fingers making a mess as he panted.

They tumbled onto to the bed, Junno pressing Koyama face first into the spread with hand on the center of his back. Koyama moaned and arched, pressing back into the line of Junno’s body desperately. Clothes were fumbled, pushed just out of the way so Junno could push a finger up into Koyama and he moaned high and needy.

Maru woke up with a groan, pushing his face into the pillow and breathing slowly. His body was still buzzing but he was spinning with vertigo, couldn’t stop visualizing the curve of Junno’s lower back as he practically crawled all over Koyama. Couldn’t find the words to explain the twisting feeling in his stomach, something like jealousy or anger but tempted with resignation and even a little elation. If there were ever two people who deserved each other-- only Maru knew them better than that: their Bonnie and Clyde would go down in a hail of bullets.

He was also alone on the bed.

Maru was thick and fuzzy from sleep. Just barely recovered enough from the last few days.

Junno and Koyama were sitting cross-legged together on the floor passing back and forth a large bottle of water. Koyama saw him and the bottle of water hovered before meandering through the air towards him. Maru grabbed it out of the air before the bottle could drop.

“Morning, Sunshine,” Junno sang. He had that manic look in his eyes, body wired tight with crackling energy. Historically not the best start to the day. He took a long pull of the water his body screaming for more energy. “Are you up for some mayhem and destruction?” Junno leered at him and Koyama just looked smug and satisfied.

“Junno, we need to talk. Now.” He turned and went back into the bedroom-- he took the water with him, small victories or he would drive himself insane. The door closed behind them and Maru snarled at Junno. “We can’t.”

Junno grabbed him and shoved him up against the door taking him by surprise and Maru hated surprises. “We can.” He hissed. “Do you plan to keep running scared forever?”

It wasn’t a matter of can or can’t it was a matter of suicidal-stupid and living to see his next birthday. “Yes.” Maru growled. “In fact I do.”

Junno shoved him hard enough against the door for the frame to rattle and the sharp edges of Maru’s shoulders to bruise. He bared his teeth at Junno in a growl. Intentions flashed lightening quick, Junno forcing him to agree, Junno kissing him, Koyama pulling the door off the wall.

“I don’t remember you always being such a pussy.” Junno said and Maru glared at him.

“I know how this ends.” There wasn’t going to be a happily ever after, there was nothing but fire and death. “And we all die.”

Junno’s palms slapped to either side of his face and they were so close. Junno pressed a quick hard kiss to his mouth, smacking his lips ridiculously. “Isn’t that the fun thing about the future; it’s always changing.”

“Doesn’t. Work. Like. That.” Maru bit out, like he could beat the truth into Junno’s skull with his words.

“Oh but it does, I know it does. Always changing, isn’t it, darling? Just like that,” he snapped right by Maru’s ear the sound like a gunshot, “and everything is different.” Suddenly he bit the corner of Maru’s mouth. “Didn’t see that coming did you?”

“I hate you.” Maru snarled. “What did he promise you?”

“A chance to strike a blow at the heart of Division?”

“You’re not that nice.”

“You wound me. The reel, the film reel. We’re going to steal it. Imagine the things we could do with it. It’d be like playing chess while holding both kings.”

“On a board made of razors.” They’d be playing with fire before they even pulled it off. Maru couldn’t even begin to count the ways this could go wrong.

“I don’t want to have to make you agree with me. Everything is so much easier when you just listen to me because you like me,” Junno purred.

“Well I don’t.” Maru bit back. “He’s going to go running back to Division and we’re going to pay for it.”

“Maybe. Or we could kill him and take it. Would you like that? Come on baby, you and me against the world.”

“We can’t win this, Junno.” Maru tried again. Burning, all he could see was burning. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.

“Just watch me.” His filthy smile was a promise and it reminded him of the doughnut shop so long ago.

“What’s the plan? I’ll reserve judgment until we’ve got a plan.” Maru finally said, each word a small defeat.

“We’re only waiting for you, honey-bunches.”

 

\--

 

“I don’t want to help you.” Maru bit against Koyama’s mouth, trying to shove him off. Koyama was sitting across his lap where he’d poured himself not even a moment earlier. Junno was off to see if he couldn’t find some party favours, Koyama wasn’t telling them everything and someone needed to keep an eye on him. “I didn’t want to help.”

“But you’ve always liked to be told what to do.” Koyama purred, grabbing the hand that Maru was trying to use to shove him off, and pulled it against his chest. “The options scare you.”

“Shut up.” Maru snapped. He could see what Koyama was about to do. He batted Koyama’s hands away before they could land. “Seriously, I will shut you up if I need to.”

“Will you?” Koyama sat back on his haunches. “You make it like you don’t want it, but you still watch me. I could make it good for you, you know I can.”

“I left you behind.” Maru snarled and Koyama’s fingers dug painfully into his wrist. “That’s in the past now.” Maru continued cruelly. Koyama’s face was stricken, like Maru had managed to land a blow. Koyama was still so transparent.

“What and your shining knight is so perfect?”

The future was still there like a word on the tip of his tongue, Junno and Koyama all twisted together. That and the both of them dead. Choices, choices.

Maru kissed Koyama, but only to shut him up. Their relationship had always been more push than pull. Koyama’s fingers twisted painfully in his hair. Maru bit his bottom lip. This was a bad idea; this had bad idea written all over it. He grabbed Koyama’s cheeks and licked into his mouth, holding his lips open with thumbs pressed against the hinge of his jaw.

Koyama was purring against him, and it was like old times. Down time between missions was always spent like this. Learning the curves of Koyama’s body. Sharper now, he was so thin and so powerful now. Koyama could tear the room apart with his brain if he wanted too.

“We shouldn’t do this.” Maru gasped, managing to dislodge Koyama from his lap. He tumbled to the ground, mouth swollen and legs splayed.

“Rough stuff,” he said, looking up through his lashes coyly.

“Stay over there,” Maru snarled at him. Koyama just grinned at him a little wild and a lot manic. He looked a lot like Junno right there. Eyes blazing and ready for anything.

“Oh, but where is the fun in that?” Koyama smiled at him, sharp like a knife and just as vicious.

 

\--

 

Their plan involved a lot of explosives.

Maru wasn’t worried.

If Maru had any sense he would be a gibbering mess.

The future was exploding left and right. What did they even know about wiring explosives; Koyama and himself were field agents and Junno was a gangster with border-line personality problems.

Still, Junno had his contacts, people scattered all over the country; people who hated loving him and people who hated him on principle but had something to gain from helping him out. More than half those people were into some of the more unpleasant parts of business, black market and trade of contraband and human trafficking. His friends, Junno called them. His friends were going to be their resources to execute his mess of an elaborate plan.

Koyama claimed the cinema was across town right smack dab in one of the shopping districts. They’d be holding the screening that night; and that that’d be just a start. Tucked in between previews and people wouldn’t know what hit them, then as it spread so would the film. “No, I don’t know what Patient Zero was instructed to Push on that film,” Koyama had said pre-emptively to Maru and Junno’s question.

The idea was Junno’s of course. He was obviously enamored by the idea of finding out Maru was a runaway arsonist and wanted to play too. “Adds a bit of intrigue to our little game, yeah?” All winks at Maru in the doorway as he looked over Koyama’s shoulder.

Koyama drew pencilled maps about sneaking into the projection room. Junno said he was flexible enough to manage vents and could bend low enough to crawl through dark corridors undetected. Yeah, he was bendy and sleek, but Maru didn’t dare offer his experienced opinion on this point especially where Koyama immediately offered an appreciative once-over, brown-eyed gaze lingering on hips and thighs.

God. Maru had never seen so much looming destruction in one day.

And the plan was to get in the projection room, steal the film reel as one of them set the dynamite near enough to the entrance to distract Division agents after they had already been in and out, film reel in their possession.

 

\--

 

“How much are we gonna need for them?” Maru asked distractedly as the three of them walked up the road alone. “Explosives, I mean.”

“No, no,” Junno muttered, eyeing alleyways and buildings. Most of it looking bare on this side of town. “Explosives are cheap. Dirt cheap; you can get any type of dynamite or water-gel explosive for an even trade. Could probably trade you.”

“That’s not an even trade,” Maru remarked wearily.

“It’d be a lot of dynamite,” was Junno’s impish reply before he picked up his steps, jogging toward a warehouse. “Lucky for you, I’ve still got cash.”

Koyama walked with his arms crossed loosely, watching the both of them with a carefully neutral stare.

The warehouse was empty and Maru only saw a large crate in his mind’s eye. “What are we doing?” he asked and his voice echoed off bare walls and broken windows.

“Keeping the Watchers blind,” Koyama offered from the doorway. “A careful trade.”

Junno was kicking aside stray lumber and tools, looking for something. “The guy I have leaving a boxed present here for us is a friend of my dynamite guy and has never seen me, so if anyone from Division’s watching us then they’re unlikely to find a trace in the eyes of my usual contacts. All he knows is he’s coming back under the hour to pick up the same crate again but I’ll leave--” Junno kicked off his shoe suddenly, digging into his sock and pulling out flattened bills one by one-- “these in there instead.”

Maru didn’t deign to ask why Junno was keeping money in his socks now or if he quite literally had a ‘guy’ for everything. Whether that made him Junno’s ‘Watcher guy’ or not had to be beside the point.

“It’s a crate,” Maru said, scanning the large room. “I saw a crate.”

“There,” Koyama announced, pointing at the rectangular wooden crate pushed as if carelessly aside and covered in insulation material. He raised a hand and the crate shifted toward them, top flipping off and clattering to the cement. Row upon row, packed, stacked and wired were about two to four hundred pounds of Tovex.

Koyama seemed quite fearless, stepping close and picking up a stack of wrinkled papers all stapled together. “Complete with instructions?” He glanced at Maru who was beginning to feel the reality of the plan hurtling at him. His fingers squeezed to a detonator. Screams and all the smoke, choking him up already.

“I’ll bring the car around,” Junno murmured, eyes squinting up devilishly.


	3. Can’t fight these bad intentions Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Live for the moment’ is a good motto when you’re not a Watcher. Maru can see the future and it’s looking pretty grim.

         Nothing more frustrating than the inevitable and Junno and Koyama had become that unstoppable force driving him to the spot he could already see.

It was like watching the tilt and sway of twin meteorites touching on the edges of the Earth’s gravitational pull where Maru felt like that Earth, the way Koyama and Junno were together in action. They were both oddly methodical and worked easily around Maru’s disgruntled and wary looks.

The three of them sat in the sitting room, stolen tools scattered around the coffee table. Junno perched on the sofa and read the instructions like he was dictating an operatic drama and Koyama’s shoulder bumped Maru’s as they tucked the electric cable into the blasting caps on each pre-packed roll of Tovex.

“Put your finger here,” Koyama murmured to him, tying sharp wire knots around Maru’s index finger pressed to water-gel explosives. Koyama looked inexcusably pleased, kept shooting him glances over their scattered mess of tape and wire like a faint and teasing reminder that they were there, now much more bound together by the task.

“We’ll need guns too,” Junno said contemplatively. “Hm, so much to do.”

Maru was resigned. He’d come to a point where it just seemed useless to pretend that this wasn’t its own type of soothing. Watching Koyama’s long-fingered hands looking delicate even with a scewdriver in them, biting on the end of a wire . Koyama still put things in his mouth when his hands were full...

“I should have learnt to play with explosives sooner. It’s more me,” Junno chirped, stretching out on the floor next to them, flipping a page over.

 

\--

 

“See anything?” Junno asked him, arm loped around his shoulders. For all his tone was the same-- a moment, more than a couple nights ago, walking into his usual game with danger and confident in his win-- he curled his fingers in tightly, like he really, _really_ needed Maru to reply.

Maru looked at him sidelong, saw his gaze trained on the ventilation entrance. They were standing on the roof where Maru would help lower Junno in with Koyama below, out of Watcher’s sight, to wait with the Tovex, detonator ready to be armed. Maru swallowed.

“Usual,” he answered ironically. “Us against the world. The losing battle.”

Junno let out a soft sound of jittery laughter. “Ah, I do love it when you talk doom, but I’m pretty sure that’s the one we’re winning, though.”

He let go of him and snapped in his harnesses, checking they were secure. He handed Maru the other end of the rope to hook around the iron pipes near the roof’s edge. He lifted himself from the top with ease, legs lifting into the vent opening fluidly.

Maru was standing in a swim of all these outcomes and his despair was quickly becoming a factor. “How do you figure?” he asked off-handedly.

Junno’s shock of black hair was standing on end then, arms poised to let go. “Haven’t you been keeping score?” he asked, imitating a faint incredulity before he let go and he disappeared swiftly into the downward curve of the vents.

Maru shut his eyes, watching as the branching honeycomb tunnels of futures swirled and singled. Eyes. Watcher, seeing the decision as Junno hit the flat surface of metal below, probably crouched. No, that had been hours before. They knew. Point in fact, they were being expected. Division now had agents swarming the place and there was no way Junno was going to get to that projection room.

The trouble with choices was that when Maru made them, it was always those split-second curves like clipping the curb on wheels; a side-effect burn of an injury but nothing lasting. In comparison, the one before him was like an open plain with a far off track to god knew where. He’d been watching this one spot in the future so closely that the details and premonitions of it had swept in on him this early.

It shook him to his core as he realised it was time to make a real choice.

“Fuck,” he said quite viciously.

 

\--

 

“What’s going on?” Koyama-- crouched behind the car, detonator in hand-- was visibly scared, eyes wide and the earth beneath him rumbling as he scanned the entrance. The place seemed still enough but it was obvious to Maru now that Division wanted it that way.

“Give me the detonator,” Maru ordered.

Koyama’s hands were shaking. He passed it to him, looking once again like that kicked dog as he tried to read Maru’s expression. Maru looked down at him and felt the futures square in on him, visions propelling to the now and his adrenaline was racing as he gripped the detonator. He wouldn’t be able to pull this off quickly enough alone. He wasn’t clear on exactly where Koyama stood in this-- god, but he was so changeable. As his vision seemed hardened by the future and present eclipsing in those world-changing minutes, he couldn’t see a thing past the next second.

“Don’t lie to me when I ask you this,” he barked and Koyama blinked at him. “I can save you, all right? But I need to know you’re on my side. Are you?”

Koyama’s pink lips were a trembling line, but his gaze had sharpened, clear and stark, drunk with fear and threats. Still the unerring agent. “Just tell me what to do.”

“I’m going in,” Maru stated staunchly, opening the car door to reach for the rifle. “You’re going to Move the Tovex in the trunk and follow me and place it precisely where I direct, then you get the fuck out of there, got me?”

Koyama nodded, getting to his feet.

Maru ran with Koyama quick on his tail; the shadow of their large pack of Tovex loomed over them. The glass doors were unlocked, which only confirmed Maru’s worst fear. The agents could be lying anywhere in wait for them.

They only really had minutes to do this. His decision right then, banking on being able to get to the actual theatre, might have been a game-changer from his own self-defeating despair only moments before. The lobby had mirrors lining each wall and the setting was becoming more and more eerily familiar to him, dreams eclipsing the way the future had struck suddenly. His intentions were bordering on manic as his eyes darted frantically around for any movement.

After all, he could still take Koyama and run.

“Upstairs,” he muttered as Koyama caught up to him, the Tovex making an off breezy sound as it floated behind him. There was a range of about ten different theatres, which meant the projection room could be any number of them.

He filtered through the images, fixing on Junno primarily and he saw the Watcher. Suited, sharp and rather young-looking whispering orders to another man. He saw a trigger pulled. Where, though?

The number seven flashed across his vision and he nearly tripped over his own feet. Junno dropping to his knees, mouth full of blood and it seemed real already. He wasn’t breathing properly.

“Seven. Theatre seven,” he gasped out, making it just up the steps. Koyama’s eyes narrowed as he Moved the Tovex in front of them. They just needed to trigger something big enough to get all the agents out of hiding.

Maru saw it too late. His thought cut off when the Tovex dropped, and there was a crash as Koyama was thrust abruptly back, tossed right into the mirror-plated wall. Two Movers advanced with Bleeders quickly on the way. Maru tucked the edge of the detonator in his pocket and grabbed Koyama’s arm, helping him up. “Run, now!” he hollered, turning in a quick twist of his body, pointing the gun at one of the Movers. It was close-range and a blind aim but the gun was warm in his hand and the trigger felt like a vibration run through him as the man dropped, bullet right through his skull.

Koyama’s eyes opened and apart from being scared, looked furious. An older man stepped towards them, palm raised and Koyama threw up a shield with a sharp sound of effort. Maru ran for the Tovex, dragging it with him as he continued down the hall.

That was when the vision of the Bleeders in the lower lobby clouded what he could see. The screams would begin in seconds.

“Koyama!” he managed, twisting around.

There was the sound of glass shattering without the screams; the floor under him trembled. Koyama stalked down the hall in the opposite direction, arms by his side as he began to rip at rafters, framings and baseboards, flinging them at his attackers as he started to essentially rip down the walls.

Maru could hear the echo of gunshots but he couldn’t determine which were in his head and which were happening now. He dropped the explosive, hands trembling as he gripped the spool of electric wire and twisted the exposed ends together, attaching it firmly to the detonator in his hand.

There was another flight past theatres one to five. He saw the Watcher in his head standing in front of the projection room door at the other end, gun pointed in wait for Junno to turn the corner. He’d have shot him in cold blood the moment he appeared. Maru stopped short, and looked up just as the vent over his head swung open.

First Junno’s legs slid out and he dropped to the carpet at a crouch with only enough time to register Maru standing behind him. He was just about to whirl around, but Maru already had the butt of his gun ready. He struck Junno sharply and he went down in a collapse of limbs.

He paused, leaning against the wall. “I know you’ve seen me,” he called out. He heard the click of a safety and knew the Watcher had heard him. “Believe me or don’t, I’m holding the detonator attached to about a hundred pounds of water-gel explosive and if you shoot me, the building goes down around all of us.”

He heard the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. He shut his eyes, saw expensive shoes treading over the thin carpet. “I can see you,” the other Watcher said. “Saw you.”

“I saw you too,” Maru said, eyes still shut. Five metres. He focused his intentions on a cocktail of things, the detonator, his own roiling fear and something simple. “So let’s talk.”

The steps came even closer; he was just as hesitant, watching for Maru’s move. It was like the old days. Chess pieces sweeping across a dark board, waiting for someone to slip. Maru took a steady breath, thought of running for it, envisioned himself leaving Junno on the floor like it was real.

“All right. What are your terms?”

“I only came for the Pusher. Let me take him and we’ll go. Your experiment will go as planned.”

The footsteps stopped. The man was thinking, gauging his move-- knew quite easily that Maru was lying somehow.

“I have orders to kill you on sight.”

Maru edged closer to the corner. “Tell me how that ends.”

Only a metre away. He used the fear and anxiety shaking through him to add conviction to his next thought, to make the intention bright with truth. _I only want out of this mess_. The Watcher took another step and that was all Maru needed. He pivoted from his corner, reaching instinctively for the hand that held the gun pointed, crushing the butt of his own gun right in the soft tendon in the crook of the Watcher’s arm. The gun clattered to the carpet and Maru pressed his arm in a swift blow right against the other Watcher’s clavicle, shoving him rough against the wall opposite.

It was in the silence he was hoping to remain undetected and a struggle would be mere minutes. He pressed his thumb to the man’s larynx, holding him in place with his weight. The shock of his head striking the wall had him dizzy and flailing, arms pinioned and knees locked. Maru pressed deep, thumb closing off any air passage. The Watcher made a croaking noise as he tried to struggle and breathe both at once, but Maru held steady. Agonising minutes as the man twitched, whole body convulsing off the wall and under Maru before going limp.

Maru dropped him, trying to keep his head clear as it swirled with mixed concepts and then Koyama. Koyama. He saw him change direction; something must have happened.  
Maru looked over at the projection room door fleetingly. If he pushed the Tovex-- or at the very least rolled it-- he’d be able to start off the explosion there.

The door was shut, but it seemed an open thought was sitting with him as he considered his options. He could just as easily walk in there, pluck up the film reel and walk out of there.

He heard Junno shift and groan as he came to. He wasn’t about to let Junno make this decision for him.

 

\--

 

Junno looked justifiably out of sorts as Maru grabbed his arm, hauling him up. “We’re running,” he stated and Junno, completely dazed, complied readily.

They sprinted down the hallway and Maru waited until they had hit the bottom step before he reached for the detonator key. It sounded like something far off as it swept the upper floors in flame and debris. Maru grabbed Junno’s arm as they ploughed out the doors, practically crashing to the cement as the building itself went up in flames.

Maru rolled over, resting on his elbows as he stared up at the building, glass collapsing in on itself as the smoke began to lick up at the sky.

“Where’s Koyama?” Junno queried a bit foggily, looking very young and confused.

Maru finally breathed, slow and still shaken. “He’s by the car.”

Junno twisted around to where Maru glanced back. Koyama was right where Maru left him, seated on the hood of the car, staring as the flames began to rise. Junno squinted and Maru watched him rub the back of his head, checking for blood.

“Did you seriously knock me unconscious?” Junno cried.

Maru reached back to where he’d dropped it when they’d hit the ground. The film reel in its metal casing. “Now we’re even,” he reported.

He had ordered Koyama to run, but he’d doubled back after disposing of the Bleeders. With the exits blocked and more of Division’s agents coming for them, Maru had had to lead them away, both detonator and film reel in hand giving Koyama the appropriate amount of time to escape. With their Watcher dead, and only a number of disporportionate field agents left, he’d led them off track. He had been afforded the narrow chance of rescuing the both of them and it hadn’t been very glamorous along the lines of the amount of time he’d spent running and perhaps a little too much hiding behind things, scared out of his wits.

Still, the way he saw it; the details of the transpired events was based strictly on a need-to-know basis and, in Maru’s opinion, Junno really didn’t need.

Junno was sitting up, looking a tad outraged with him as he stared down at the film reel in his lap, perplexed and frustrated. “What did you do? And why did I have to miss it?” He seemed on the verge of whining, high tones.

Maru was really feeling the exhaustion on-coming, but the futures were swimming at a steady pace. Only Junno and Koyama’s as their wants and intentions hopped from target to target. Trivial things. None of which resulted in Maru’s immediate danger anyhow.

“I was faced with two choices,” Maru replied shortly. “I chose both.”

 

\--

 

It started when Junno bites the corner of Koyama’s mouth out of the blue.

Well it’s not so out of the blue. Maru had seen it coming. Saw it coming before Koyama even waltzed back into his life the same way he left in blaze of fire and life-or-death decisions.

Their hotel room wasn’t the most glamorous of places, and Maru still felt on the edge like there was something buzzing under his skin. They brought him right back to the powder-keg analogy, with Junno slapping Koyama’s ass playfully and him arching into it whining like a filthy whore. Maru swallowed thickly. They were shameless, like he wasn’t here and a quick check shows that if he didn’t move they would continue just like this. Junno would watch as Koyama slithered to the ground all hot-eyed and coyly pliant.

If Maru didn’t move Junno would grab fist-fulls of Koyama’s blond hair as he sucked him off. Would make Koyama moan and choke on his dick until they were both covered in come and sharing cat-got-the-canary-grins.

“Seriously?” Maru said instead, his vision didn’t show himself shooting himself in the face but if he had to watch that he just might.

He may have found something that wasn’t quite peace with Koyama and Junno both orbiting him like asteroids on a collision course. But he wasn’t in a rush to watch his past run face-first into his future with a bang.

“What?” Koyama said, and he was spread across Junno’s thigh, long legs bracing him against the floor as he tangled his hands in Junno’s hair forcing his head backwards so he could kiss him from above. “Is it the view?” Only Koyama was gorgeous, all long and lean and so willing, and he knew it.

“Come here.” Junno said and his eyes were so-black. Even if he knew it was just Junno pushing him he couldn’t stop it, rising to his feet and moving into an uneasy space that wasn’t close enough to touch but wasn’t far enough away to be comfortable (America would be far enough away for him to be entirely comfortable with this).

“Is this really what we should be doing?” It was only a matter of time before Division was after them again. Just because they believed the reel was gone didn’t meant they weren’t a bit mad about the whole thing. Terrorists, half the world would be happy to find them. Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee didn’t look like they gave a fuck. It was part of their grace.

“What better?” Koyama smiled, leaning back and giving Maru the choice of catching him or letting him fall. If Maru didn’t choose the catch him he _would_ land on the floor. Maru let Koyama rest his weight against Maru’s chest, reaching one arm back to wrap around his shoulders his chest a bridge between Junno and Maru.

He looked up at Maru and smiled.

Junno licked his bottom lip and grinned, eyes full of filthy-promise. They were going to do this with or without him.

Maru swallowed. _Choices._

He kissed Koyama hard, the angle all wrong and the only reason they didn’t all tip over was because Junno had wrapped his hands around Koyama’s slim hips and held him up. He was watching them both intently.

“That’s the kind of forward thinking I like to see from you.” Junno said, laughing against the arch of Koyama’s neck mouthing wetly at his collar bone.

“I did miss this.” Koyama hummed, and he rolled his spine so he was sitting on Junno’s lap again. He kissed Junno like he was trying to share Maru with him. Maru for his part wasn’t sure where to put his hands.

“I would just like to note: I hate you both.” Maru said between grit teeth. Junno had both hands full of Koyama’s ass, the tips of his fingers teasing his hole through his trousers and Koyama was whining against his mouth. Maru adjusted himself in his pants, staring at the wet slide of their lips, tongues slipping everywhere.

“Noted.” Junno growled.

“Bed.” Koyama said eyes dark.

Koyama did tend to get his way, after a fashion.

Junno latched onto him and Maru had to wonder if it felt weird, Junno kissing him when his mouth didn’t taste like alcohol and his fingers didn’t stumble over the buttons to Junno’s shirt. “So Hot.” Koyama murmured behind them hemming them in with telekinetic nudges every couple of steps or so.

Naked they were both familiar to him, topography worn into the tips of his fingers and the dip of his palm. But it was something else to watch Junno investigating the sharp crest of Koyama’s hip bone with his mouth, or the curve of his bicep. Koyama was irritatingly needy reaching for Maru each time he tried to move away, pressing kiss after kiss against his mouth. Maru grunted with annoyance when Koyama grabbed him around the chin forcing him back to his mouth once more.

“Making up for lost time.” Koyama said, grinning sharply.

Junno blew a raspberry against Koyama’s stomach that shattered that may-have-been charged moment and Koyama blinked for a moment looking stunned before going completely spread eagle with a delighted laugh. “I like you.” He said, gazing down at Junno with wide adoration that was all too familiar and just on the edge of mildly terrifying. “I think I’m going to keep you.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been kept.” Junno said, with a smile like he was planning on devouring Koyama and just pondering where to start. With all Maru knew about Junno it could be just that. “Could be exciting.”

Maru could only feel relieved. _Confused_ and relieved. On their own they were just too much, love like drowning, with another person to temper the mood Maru might just survive them. Even if he didn’t survive their combined plans to rule the world. With his help _they_ might survive it.

“Without me you’d both be dead.” He hissed, kissing Junno as Koyama finally let him go. Koyama arched and rolled his body like a wave rubbing up against them both. Maru tilted Junno’s head a little so he could kiss him harder, deeper. If he was going to do this he was going to do it right.

“Does that mean we’re the kept ones?” Koyama laughed, and Maru felt Junno grin against his lips reckless and familiar. He liked the idea of both of them being his, even if it implied that he had some kind of control over the two of them when he’d never had anything close to that.

“Something like that.” Maru mumbled against Junno’s lips sucking the bottom one into his mouth and releasing it with a wet pop. Koyama rubbed up against them, dragging the wet head of his dick over Maru’s hip. “Hey.” He groaned and Koyama did it again.

Maru was the only one still wearing some clothes, his boxers still stubbornly clinging to his hips while Koyama was naked as the day he was born and Junno kept only his socks.

They rolled across the bed play fighting as Maru sat back on the edge watching them. Koyama fought dirty using his powers to pull the sheets around but Junno fought dirty in the fact that he grabbed Koyama’s dick and the sheets that had been wrapping around his ankles went slack with Koyama’s face. He shoved his hips into Junno’s grip whining wordless sounds.

“Harder, he likes it when it almost hurts.” Maru said without thinking and Junno listened to him, making Koyama hiss and dig his fingers into the blankets.

“I feel like I should be jealous.” Junno said softly, watching Koyama fall apart under his hands.

“Don’t, Koyama is just easy.” Maru replied. He kicked his boxers off, letting them hit the floor forgotten like the rest of their clothes. “Besides, I always know when you want to fuck someone.”

Junno gave him a wild smile. Maru bit it. It wasn’t the same if they weren’t trying to take each other apart with mouths and nails. Koyama’s hand scored lines across his thigh with Junno’s fingers bit into his shoulders the two of them pressed so close it almost hurt as they kissed. One of Junno’s hands slid down his side in an almost-ticklish wave, down over his ribs to his hip and around to the fleshy part of his ass.

“Want to fuck _you_.” Junno growled obscenely against his mouth and there was no power in those words no more than the syllables that they were made with but it was enough to make Maru’s knees shake with the force of it. “Want Koyama to watch you moan for it.”

“Fuck you.” Maru hissed back, he didn’t need to look into the future to know that between the two of them they could make him beg for it. Didn’t need anything to know that they would.

That didn’t stop him from pushing his ass into Junno’s fingers as they teased against his hole dry and ill-prepared. Koyama slithered across the bed, shifting where he had been almost under them to dig through one of the duffle bags tossed on the floor. It must have been Koyama’s because he found the lube quickly.

It flew through the air and smacked Junno in the shoulder before hovering in the air for a moment before Junno snatched it with the same greedy smile he had when millions of Yen were on the line. Maru should feel flattered. Instead he felt split apart, Junno pressing two fingers into him just a shade faster than he was comfortable with.

“Relax.” Junno commanded and those words did have power. Maru went liquid unable to keep himself together. He writhed when Junno rubbed up against his prostate, fingers sliding through the sheets without purchase. Koyama was there again, kissing him as Junno shoved a third finger into him, but he was so loose it just slid in, pulling him apart. Maru hissed wordless things against Koyama’s mouth as they kissed. Promises and threats and some things that were both and some that were neither.

He pulled Koyama’s hair hard as he kissed him trying to convey some of the feeling of Junno opening him up.

“I think that’s good.” Koyama winced, his mouth was swollen and his hair a mess. He looked wrecked already. Maru grinned at Junno, Junno’s mouth was a flushed streak across his pale face and his hair was a wild pale halo around his head. “Come on.” Koyama whined looking all wide-eyed and begging like it was him about to be fucked. In fact Maru knew for a fact that he made that exact face right before he got _demanding_.

“You never needed this much before.” Maru said, watching Junno from under the fan of his own lashes.

“We never had such an audience before.” Junno replied.

Maru found his face burning as he was rolled over, ass in the air. Koyama just smirked at him eyes dancing as he pet over Maru’s shoulders. The motion would have been tender coming from anyone else. He still didn’t quite feel ready for the slide in. Junno’s fingers were long and thin but his dick was thicker, pushing inside relentlessly. Maru groaned letting his head drop low, just breathing. He could feel Junno thick and so _there_ with every inhale, like he was trying to fuck the very centre of him.

“So good.” Koyama said petting his face, fingers sliding through his hair and over his cheeks, along the bridge of his nose. “Look at you.”

Maru groaned something wordless, it was supposed to be sarcastic, something to stop him from being swept away completely but Junno took that moment to rock against his ass, pressing deeper for a moment and Maru was going to fly apart. “Feels good doesn’t it?” Maru gasped hard, the words slammed through him like a touch against his dick. He didn’t even know that Junno could do that. “It feels so amazing.” He purred, “like you could come just from this.”

“Yes.” Maru sobbed, pushing back against each of Junno’s thrusts. The thought was in his head now, borrowing into his brain. He could come from this, from being fucked so good. Koyama shoved two fingers in his mouth muffling anything else he wanted to say. He toyed with them, running the flat edge of his tongue along the cuticles, concentrating instead on feeling out the shape of nail beds.

Koyama moaned, sounding muffled and they must be kissing over him.

“You know you want to.” Junno said, soft and intimate. Koyama whined softly, without being able to see his eyes Maru couldn’t tell if it was a command or a suggestion. Didn’t really matter. He gave Koyama’s fingers a long suck, letting them slip from his mouth with a wet pop that was almost lost in the obscene-slick sound of Junno fucking him.

“Yeah, okay okay.” Koyama said breathlessly.

His legs were so long, they should be illegal. Maru wrapped his hand around one of Koyama’s thighs and feeling out the jump and twitch of muscle under his palms. His dick was curving pretty against the flatness of his stomach, the head leaving wet smears against Koyama’s tan. Maru’s mouth watered before he even got his lips around it.

Nothing mattered, not the present, the past or the future, nothing but Junno’s cock shoving him down on Koyama’s and the muffled sounds they were eating from each other’s mouths as they kissed. Time didn’t matter at all. Minutes were measured in the ache in his hips and the heat of his lips as they were pressed against his teeth, the underside of Koyama’s dick riding the curve of his jaw.

“Come.” Junno commanded and Maru was completely helpless but to obey. He had to let Koyama slip from his lips as he bucked his hips, shoving the head of Junno’s cock against his prostate as it tore through him. Electricity buzzing along his skin, it seemed to stretch on and on until everything grew brittle and shattered. Maru made a mess of the bed, he was breathing hard shoulders shaking from the force of it.

“Fuck you, Junno.” He panted, his nails had dug crescent shaped bruises into Koyama’s thigh. He was whining and jerking himself, long fingers wrapped around his wet dick. Junno only hummed in assent.

Koyama came with a sharp sound; like he was breaking apart and at least that hadn’t changed at all. He splattered his own thighs with it, shaking through it his thighs tense to either side of Maru’s head. He collapsed to the side, arms and legs just everywhere looking pleased and well fucked.

When Junno came it was with a bitten off curse, pressing so close that Maru was being shoved into the mattress and Koyama’s stomach. Only Junno collapsed on top of him and Maru had to wiggle out from under him, because he was a lazy bastard. That meant that he was too close to Koyama who was hot and sticky with sweat and all sorts of other mess. Maru couldn’t be bothered to move the three of them making a sort of pile that spread across the bed.

Maru couldn’t foresee any of them moving to get cleaned off any time soon.

\--

London wasn’t bad but it wasn’t Tokyo. It didn’t have the same kind of neon-glam that Tokyo did. London was an old city, and her buildings reflected that, narrow streets and Gothic arches.

Maru scowled at a red double-decker as it passed by too close to his nose waiting for the light to change.

“I like this city.” Junno said, squinting at the hazy sun. It hadn’t been properly sunny since they got here, the watery sun coming out only behind the pale clouds.

“Me too.” Koyama said, looking over the rims of his glasses at a car that rolled by. Maru couldn’t name the make, but Koyama was having a vivid fantasy about ripping the man from it with his mind. Maru was used to the crowds of people; there was nothing like Tokyo, and all the little futures that blossomed with each step.It was oddly kind of soothing.

“You would.” Maru said to neither of them in particular.

“Let’s find a bar.” Junno hummed, Koyama fell in step just behind him. Maru chose to follow them. Somewhere in the future was a man with a gun and a dog, and they were going to _need_ Maru if they were going to survive it.


End file.
